Nickelback
Get Rollin’ BMG
Album number 10 is the sound of a band playing to their strengths.
Tricky business, Nickelback. Who could not admire them? After 10 albums, the Canadian band undoubtedly remain a commercial powerhouse, although their claims to be the second-best-selling foreign act in the US (behind The Beatles) may interest fans of Elton John, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin etc. They’ve had the same line-up since 2005’s All The Right Reasons. They’ve stayed the course with a succession of rip-roaring albums. They’ve long established their own sound: Herculian anthems propelled by Chad Kroeger’s mighty rasp of a voice. And they don’t do curve balls.
Yet Nickelback are difficult to love. Kroeger has never gone out of his way to be liked. And on a musical level, no curve balls means few chances are taken; perhaps over the course of 10 albums a band who claim to be the eleventh best-selling act of all time might have developed their sound more. After all, there are tracks on Get Rollin’ (Steel Still Rusts especially) that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the their 1996 debut Curb.
But that’skicks in with Daniel Adair’s whiplash drums, a guitar buzz from the Nine Inch Nails playbook and Kroeger growling his outlaw’s tale (‘Get By the time closes proceedings with Kroeger intoning the song’s title against an almighty and mightily complex swirl, the album has ticked all the boxes worth ticking.
