Review Summary: Nickelback aim to change the world, one bedpost at a time.
Dark Horse is Nickelback’s sixth album. It sold 326,000 copies in its first week and remained in the Billboard 200 for more than 125 consecutive weeks. It won the Juno Award for album of the year. Dark Horse sold 5 million worldwide, and 3 million in the US. Eventually even I found enough incentive to buy a copy. Then after listening to it 3 times from beginning to end, I came to the logical conclusion that this mulch-platinum album of the year winner sucks beyond belief.
I’m not sure if I should rant against the horrors of Nickelback’s music, if it can be called that, or if I should praise them for fooling most of the world into buying into their albums hype. The lyrics are vulgar, the riffs repetitive and the singing at best tolerable, and at worst nauseating.
‘Something in your Mouth’ has lyrics that could make a pimp blush. The opener, and quite a bit of the album, seems to have been inspired by Nickelback’s smash hit ‘Animal’, which I’m embarrassed to say I actually think is a decent song. The reason why ‘Animal’ was okay is because it was the exception on that album, the rest of the song were shallow pop rock songs, but at least that album didn’t seem like a soundtrack to a porno.
‘Gotta Be Somebody’, ‘I’d came for you’ and ‘Never gonna be alone’ are the ballads of the album. The first song mentioned was also the lead single, and it’s one of the better tracks on the album. The song is catchy and the lyrics have same emotion to them as Kroeger puts his sex life aside for a second to sing about finding the one (who will eventually be the object of another sex song). The other two ballads are weak, even by Nickelback standards. They’re not particularly catchy and the band seems to be going through the motions.
‘Just to Get High’ and ‘If Today was your last day’ are pop rock songs, and are catchy but so shallow. The problem with the album is that even though almost half the album is devoted to party and sex songs, hell even one song is called ‘S.E.X’, Nickelback still try on same other songs to be serious or emotional, and it just doesn’t work. If a band is going to include so much vulgar sex songs, then they should just go all the way and make the whole album like that. The others non-sex songs just came off as empty and meaningless since they are surrounded by trash.
Nickelback followed this album with ‘Here and Now’, a slightly better carbon copy of this release. So expect it to sell 7 million worldwide and win multiple of awards.
