Nickelback album darkhorse11/10/2022 Mutt Lange decides to give Nickelback a production caught somewhere between the two extremes of AC/DC and Def Leppard, pumping up some muscle on Nickelback's heaviest rockers and adding some color to their power ballads, suggesting some heretofore verboten suggestions of modernity in the form of electronic rhythms, even taking it to the extreme of adding drum loops to the surefire crossover hit "Gotta Be Somebody." Nickelback do manage to shed their leathery rock skin a couple of times, first with an arena-rocking "Burn It to the Ground" and then echoing Toby Keith's "Let's Talk About Us" on the white-boy rap pre-chorus for "Something in Your Mouth," but these are mere glimpses of something unpredictable Dark Horse was constructed entirely from the group's standard templates of bleating power ballads and dulled hard rock. Of the two, the music is far less offensive, particularly on Dark Horse, where they work with the legendary producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, the sonic architect behind Back in Black and Pyromania, two of hard rock's towering monuments. Nickelback are a gnarled, vulgar band reveling in their ignorance of the very notion of taste, lacking either the smarts or savvy to wallow in bad taste so they just get ugly, knocking out knuckle-dragging riffs that seem rarefied in comparison to their thick, boneheaded words. Nickelback are not known for their insight, but Chad Kroeger's caterwauling claim that "we got no class, no taste" on "Burn It to the Ground," the second song on their sixth album, Dark Horse, is a slice of perceptive, precise self-examination. For everyone else, however, the mystery of Nickelback looks no nearer to being solved.Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs. They still know how to polish their melodies for commercial radio and a certain audience who consider draining beer kegs and visiting strip clubs to be the height of sophistication will be satisfied. Worst of all, there's nothing on Dark Horse to suggest Nickelback's continuing success (27 million album sales and counting) will end here. Kroeger does his best constipated-on-the-toilet vocals on 'Never Gonna Be Alone', while the country-twinged closer 'This Afternoon', which features corny bar room sound effects, is a sub-Kid Rock abomination. Alongside the outdated sexual politics, Dark Horse also features a glut of typically soulless Nickelback chuggers. Kroeger, a man who has all the sex appeal of Margaret Thatcher in lingerie, insists on returning to the subject of women on 'Next Go Round' ("I wanna go until the neighbours all complain"), 'S.E.X' ("Maybe in the parking lot, better bring your friend") and 'Shakin' Hands', which takes great pleasure in telling the tale of a young girl caught selling her body for cash. Lines such as: "Dirty little lady with the pretty pink thong, every sugar daddy hittin' on her all night long" are simply beyond parody. That crown goes to the frontman's lecherous lyrics about a "hottie" with a "million dollar body". Based around a barrage of rehashed metal riffs, it features Kroeger performing a Limp Bizkit-style rap in the chorus, but incredibly that isn't the worst part of the song. Opener 'Something In Your Mouth' sums up the record's sheer awfulness in three and a half minutes. The result is a mixture of foul tunes and gross misogyny that makes this disc a prime contender for worst album of the year. However, it's Lange's work with hairy '80s rockers Foreigner and Def Leppard which clearly caught the attention of Nickelback, who've abandoned their usual grungey sludge and entered the world of cock rock. This sixth outing finds the group working with Robert John "Mutt" Lange, a man well-versed in making blockbuster records as the producer of Shania Twain's Come On Over. Chad Kroeger's band may have the collective personality of a damp dish cloth, but their ludicrously earnest ballads and daft stompers have cornered the commercial rock market and pummelled it into submission. Since 1995 the Canadian band have churned out five albums of post-grunge anthems, each of which has sold by the bucket-load, and conquered the airwaves with the bafflingly huge singles 'How You Remind Me' and 'Rockstar'. The Bermuda Triangle, the origins of Stonehenge and the lost city of Atlantis have nothing on the mystery that is Nickelback.
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