Description
With their fourth album, All The Right Reasons, Nickelback ditches any pretence of being a grunge band and finally acknowledges they’re a straight-up heavy rock band. Not that they’ve left the angst of grunge behind: they’re a modern rock band living in a post-grunge world, so there’s lots of tortured emotions threaded throughout the 11 songs here. But where their previous albums roiled with anger — their breakthrough How You Remind Me was not affectionate, it was snide and cynical — there’s a surprisingly large sentimental streak running throughout All The Right Reasons, and it’s not just limited to heart-on-sleeve power ballads like Far Away and Savin Me, the latter being the latest entry in their soundalike sweepstakes. No, lead singer/songwriter Chad Kroeger is in a particularly pensive mood here, looking back fondly at his crazy times in high school on Photograph (Look at this photograph/Every time I do it makes me laugh/How did our eyes get so red?/And what the hell is on Joey’s head?), lamenting the murder of Dimebag Darrell on Side of a Bullet (where a Dimebag solo is overdubbed), and, most touching of all, imagining the day when nobody died on If Everyone Cared (which would be brought about If everyone cared and nobody cried/If everyone loved and nobody lied). Appropriately enough for an album that finds Kroeger’s emotional palette opening up, Nickelback tries a few new things here, adding more pianos, keyboards, and acoustic guitars to not just ballads, but a few of their big, anthemic rockers; they even sound a little bit light and limber on Someone That You’re With, the fastest tune here and a bit of relief after all the heavy guitars. All this makes for a more varied Nickelback album, but it doesn’t really change their essence. Ending the album is the mega hit Rockstar with ZZ Top man Billy Gibbons
Track listing:
1. Follow You Home-with Billy Gibbons
2. Fight For All The Wrong Reasons
3. Photograph
4. Animals
5. Savin Me
6. Far Away
7. Next Contestant
8. Side Of A Bullet-with Dimebag Darrell
9. If Everyone Cared
10. Someone That Youre With
11. Rockstar-with Billy Gibbons