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Post Info TOPIC: Nickelback’s ‘Dark Horse’ stumbles from start


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Nickelback’s ‘Dark Horse’ stumbles from start


Nickelbacks Dark Horse stumbles from start


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Dark Horse is the sixth album released by Nickelback.
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Dark Horse Nickelback (Roadrunner)
For those hoping for a horse of a different color, Nickelbacks sixth album, Dark Horse, has the Canadian combo flogging the same old dead horse and flinging its tired rock n roll trifecta of clichés.

Produced by Shania Twains ex-hubby Robert John Mutt Lange (the man responsible for AC/DCs Back in Black, Def Leppards Pyromania and Twains Come on Over, just to name a few), Nickelbacks Dark Horse has all of the bells and whistles associated with Mutts pristine knob-twirling, including plenty of heavy guitar crunch, booming drums, shout-along choruses and more hooks than a veteran anglers tackle box.

It also has the familiar misogynistic, hedonistic hard rock (and often rocks in ones head) rigmarole that Nickelback fans cant seem to get enough of.
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Melding metal and grunge, Nickelback, in many ways, is the musical equivalent of a Hungry Man dinner. You have your large portion of meat and potatoes, a vegetable medley and, for your encore, a tasty little dessert. Nothing more, nothing less; then again, why tamper with success?

Touring behind what might go down as the Comedy Album of the Year, Nickelback singer-songwriter-guitarist Chad Kroeger, bassist Mike Kroeger (who are brothers), lead guitarist Ryan Peake and drummer Daniel Adair brings its meat-and-potatoes rock March 5 to the DCU Center in Worcester.

If lasciviousness is what youre looking for, you need to go no further than the misogynistic opening track Something in Your Mouth. With the subtlety of Tommy Lee in his X-rated home video with Pamela Anderson, Kroegers degrading, hook-laden verses are accented by hooligan background vocals shouting out Come on!, making Nickelback sound more like an angry mob than an accomplished rock band. Despite his questionable behavior of measuring a womans worth by the way she looks in a thong, this hedonistic, head-banging rocker almost compensates for the banality of the lyrics with its barrage of snarly guitars and stomping drums. I said almost.

Kroeger and company spit in the face of complacency, responsibility, liver disease and last call on Burn It to the Ground. Displaying disruptive behavior in the studio that (in the real world) would guarantee him being thrown in the slammer, the gravelly voiced singer delivers a party til you puke (or until youre thrown into the back of a police cruiser) anthem for the brain-dead masses. Acting like some modern-day marauder raping and pillaging an unsuspecting village, Kroeger proudly howls the mentally challenged mantra, No class. No taste/No shirt and (expletive)-faced. In addition, these crazy Canucks once again set out to desecrate the memory of Dimebag Darrell Abbott (of Damageplan and Pantera fame) by stealing the late guitarists killer riffs to go alongside the banal and belligerent lyrics that have Nickelback written all over them.

After panting over a scantily clad girl and drowning his suppressed hostility in endless shots of whiskey, Kroeger pretends hes a sensitive guy waiting with bated breath for that special on the wimpy power ballad, Gotta Be Somebody. Even if somehow someone bought into the notion that theres a sappy romantic hiding under all that raging testosterone and hatred toward women, Kroeger would probably scare them away with the sentimental drivel Nobody wants to go it on their own/Everyone wants to know theyre not alone/Somebody else that feels the same somewhere/Theres gotta be somebody for me out there.

On Next Go Around, Kroeger is once again easily impressed by his sexual stamina. With his distorted voice being enveloped in a noisy mix of shredding guitars and bone-crunching beats, Kroeger boasts of his sexual exploits in a macho-man banter that would even make the Motley Crue guys shrug in disbelief. In addition, Kroeger delivers the most bizarre commercial placement in a song in recent memory, with the laughably bad lines, I want you naked with your favorite heels on/Slap John Deere across my (expletive)/And ride me up and down the lawn. Im never going to look at yard work the same again.

The readymade stripper anthem Shakin Hands unfolds like a trashy ode to Ashley Dupre (fallen N.Y. governor Eliot Spitzers secret hooker squeeze) set to music. On this smut-by-numbers, bump-and-grind, roaring background vocals, strutty guitars and clanky drums supply the groove for one to strut their stuff while Kroegers words will make your brain go numb. And, in a pop culture first, Kroeger comes up with a Walt Disney-meets-Wizard of Oz analogy that turns the wart-covered, green villainess from the latter into a desired sex object in the lines, Well, she aint no Cinderella when shes getting undressed/Cause she rocks it like the naughty Wicked Witch of the West.

And just when you thought he couldnt scrape any lower, Kroeger does just that on S.E.X. A far cry from Nat King Coles L-O-V-E, Nickelbacks S.E.X. shows that romance isnt dead; it just got scared and ran for cover. Kroeger growls, snarls and sniffs around like a salivating horndog that needs to be hosed down. When Kroeger menacingly croons, S is for the simple need/E is for the ecstasy/X is just to mark the spot/Cause thats the one you really want, he sounds way too pleased with himself that he turned sex into an acronym.

Loose women may come and go waiting with bated breath for that special on the wimpy power ballad, Gotta Be Somebody. Even if somehow someone bought into the notion that theres a sappy romantic hiding under all that raging testosterone and hatred toward women, Kroeger would probably scare them away with the sentimental drivel Nobody wants to go it on their own/Everyone wants to know theyre not alone/Somebody else that feels the same somewhere/Theres gotta be somebody for me out there.

On Next Go Around, Kroeger is once again easily impressed by his sexual stamina. With his distorted voice being enveloped in a noisy mix of shredding guitars and bone-crunching beats, Kroeger boasts of his sexual exploits in a macho-man banter that would even make the Motley Crue guys shrug in disbelief. In addition, Kroeger delivers the most bizarre commercial placement in a song in recent memory, with the laughably bad lines, I want you naked with your favorite heels on/Slap John Deere across my (expletive)/And ride me up and down the lawn. Im never going to look at yard work the same again.

The readymade stripper anthem Shakin Hands unfolds like a trashy ode to Ashley Dupre (fallen N.Y. governor Eliot Spitzers secret hooker squeeze) set to music. On this smut-by-numbers, bump-and-grind, roaring background vocals, strutty guitars and clanky drums supply the groove for one to strut their stuff while Kroegers words will make your brain go numb. And, in a pop culture first, Kroeger comes up with a Walt Disney-meets-Wizard of Oz analogy that turns the wart-covered, green villainess from the latter into a desired sex object in the lines, Well, she aint no Cinderella when shes getting undressed/Cause she rocks it like the naughty Wicked Witch of the West.

And just when you thought he couldnt scrape any lower, Kroeger does just that on S.E.X. A far cry from Nat King Coles L-O-V-E, Nickelbacks S.E.X. shows that romance isnt dead; it just got scared and ran for cover. Kroeger growls, snarls and sniffs around like a salivating horndog that needs to be hosed down. When Kroeger menacingly croons, S is for the simple need/E is for the ecstasy/X is just to mark the spot/Cause thats the one you really want, he sounds way too pleased with himself that he turned sex into an acronym.

Loose women may come and go, but getting baked with ones bros is forever, or so goes the sentiment of the albums addictive closer, This Afternoon. In what has all the makings of being the Nickelback song that people who despise Nickelback will like, This Afternoon serves up Kroeger at his most loose, playful and infectious.

Kroeger name-drops ganja luminaries Bob Marley and Cheech and Chong as role models as he and his buds get incredibly stoned and vegetate on the couch. With a Southern-fried acoustic twang, Kroeger delivers the toasted toast, Get up and go out out/Me and all my friends/We drink up. We fall down/And then we do it all again. Despite its political incorrectness, the song playfully celebrates camaraderie, reckless youth and rock n roll excess without getting sappy, sleazy, sanctimonious or pretentious.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20081207/COLUMN17/812070442



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biggrinbiggrinbiggrin Ha Ha Ha.

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I was very amused by this. I always thought they were overrated and sux.

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