We Got No Class, No Taste

In two months, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the next president of the United States of America and there will be plenty of items on his plate from day one: two wars, the impending depression, Detroit imploding. One thing that should not be overlooked is NAFTA. It is hard to gauge Obama’s stance on the trade agreement as he would say it is working while campaigning in the South but here in Ohio he would say he was against it. Hopefully he was lying to the Texans because NAFTA needs a complete overhaul. Case in point: Nickelback. Think of all the goods and services that we send up to our northern neighbor over the life of NAFTA and what we get in return in a bland rock band.

The thing about Nickelback is they would have sufficed as a one hit wonder. How You Remind Me was a catchy ditty with a sing a long chorus. And the band should have quit while there were ahead because since then they have just released album after album with cheesy mid temp schlock and their attempt at heavy medal, of which they fail most of the time.

Three albums and twenty five million albums sold later, the band is back for more of the same that is so derivative of their previous songs you have to wonder if the band has some sort of Mad Libs for songwriters where they change the chord progressions and a few words and viola: a new album. It seems almost apropos that the band brought in Mutt Lange, the dude who launched Def Leppard before marrying Shania Twain to produce the album, because the band is the closest thing this generation has to a hair band making the future prom ballads and pseudo-metal even shinier than in the past.

Dark Horse starts off in true Nickelback fashion with Something in Your Mouth, that something being a, wait for it, wait for it, a thumb. If you listen closely you can hear the band snicker like sixth graders at the lamest double entendre ever. Even less subtle is S.E.X. which includes the chorus, “S is for the simple need, E is for the ecstasy.” Apparently they don’t care enough to come up with an X although it would have sufficed to stand for ecstasy. But these aren’t MENSA members we are dealing with.

The band dives deeper in to hair band territory with I’d Come for You (cue even more sixth grade snickering) which rips off even more than these five words they promised you in How You Remind Me in an almost a note for note Ad Libs type recreation of I’ll Be There for You by Bon Jovi. Nickelback even tries to recreate their one and only new idea at the end of the album when tries too hard to be Rockstar. Excuse me if I am the last to use the quasi-ironic phrase, but that is not change you can believe in.

Song to Download - Gotta Be Somebody

Dark Horse gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.