Review Summary: Nickelback begin their career with a banging, loud, growling, underground-sounding, somewhat enjoyable extended play. Such a shame as for what a disgrace to rock music they would later become.
For my first review on this site, I will review the debut effort from Nickelback, "Hesher". This is the first EP the band ever made, and it's called Hesher. It's a pretty great debut effort for what the band would later become.
The album begins with the song "Where?" which is a fairly decent opener. The lyrics are sort of generic but respectable. The grunge-like instrumentation is what makes the song good. Chads vocals aren't the best, but they never really were. The next two grunge-like tracks, "Window Shopper" and "Fly" were brought onto the groups debut album, "Curb" released in 1996, in their original format, while "Where?" I believe was rerecorded. Nevertheless, they are both solid and very enjoyable. While "Window Shopper" has painfully generic lyrics that, although stain the song, do not bring the album down, "Fly" is an excellent peice of work, and is possibly the records best song as well as a highlight for the band. The song's
lyrics are about Chad Kroeger as a child asking his parents where people go when they die, and his mother tells him that they grow wings and go to either heaven or hell. Chad is curious, so he gets his father's gun and kills himself to see where he will go.
The next song is "Truck" and despite having decent lyrics, the instrumentation is very poor and Chad's vocals are difficult to understand. A weak track on the record and it's fairly forgettable. "Left" continues the string of tracks that were brought over to the bands debut album. I'm quite certain it was rerecorded. The song talks about a man who dies and his final words are "I'm the only one left." Another highlight on the record, despite repetitiveness that slightly brings it down. Very solid track. "In Front Of Me" and "D.C." close out the album in a very strange way in terms of instrumentation. The lyrical content, on the other hand, is nothing very special. Decent tracks overall.
Nickelback's seemingly forgotten debut EP, "Hesher" is a loud, grungy and respectable first record, which is saying a lot, considering the band produced it with only about $50,000 under their belts. In conclusion, "Hesher" despite some weak spots, will entertain grunge fans, music fans, or people who just want to find something good about the band.
