Review Summary: Hardly the grand revolution it’s been made out to be, but enough of a shift in the right direction to avoid complete self-destruction.
Lets be honest for a second;
this is the album Nickelback should have released 15 years ago, after
Silver Side Up saw the light of day back in 2001. A, for the most part, hard hitting rock album, with far more interesting material that could have potentially steered the band’s infamous career in a completely different direction. Nickelback may have actually stumbled across something reasonably fresh here, and it could have been the Holy Grail that salvaged what eventually became a career of ridicule and mediocrity. It’s nothing spectacular, but it is at least passable, and could have led the Canadian radio-rockers down a much more respectable route, instead of the self-destructive
Long Road we’re all very familiar with.
Tracks such as ‘Coin for the Ferryman’ and ‘Must Be Nice’ immediately stand out as far superior representations of what Nickelback is actually capable of, at the very least instrumentally. Sure, the lyrics, as always, can leave much to be desired for and take themselves just a tad too seriously at times, “
power absolutely all for show/The piper blows his flute and off you go(?)”, but vocalist/guitarist Kroeger and guitarist Peake are able to write catchy enough riffage to justify a few re-listens of some of the albums better material, and some fun guitar solo wankery is also certainly in abundance here.
It’s also immediately evident that
Feed The Machine’s superior material is the heavier; ‘Feed The Machine’ and ‘The Betrayal (Act III)’ delve a little bit deeper into Kroeger’s angrier side, a throwback to the original grunge roots that started this whole ordeal, and it’s this side of the album that completely surpasses the generic radio ballads that have tagged along for the ride and plague 30% of the record - it really wouldn’t be a Nickelback album without them. ‘Song on Fire’ lacks any real flame to spark even the tiniest interest, and ‘After The Rain’ has about as much depth to it as a children’s paddling pool.
That being said,
Feed The Machine is at least an improvement. It’s nothing revolutionary, this isn’t the grand re-opening of ‘Kroeger and Pals’ the band would really like it to be, but you can be damned sure that early 2000s MTV would have lapped this shite up like silver sided gold dust. Trying to remain optimistic for a similar improvement on their next album, however, could be considered a bit of a difficult task given the band's overall history, especially when Kroeger’s recent attitude after the reasonable success of
Feed The Machine has been to label any band within arms reach as ‘Nickelback Lite.’
I don’t think I ever expected to take Kroeger preaching he “never made it as a wise man” quite so literally.
