Dark Horse

Album Review

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. They work with legendary producer Robert "Mutt" Lange (the sonic architect behind Back in Black and Pyromania, two of hard rock's towering monuments) here, and Lange decides to give the band 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." Lyrically, Kroeger trots out a parade of dirty little ladies in pretty pink thongs, porn stars, strippers, and s**ts, all of whom are desired and despised for showing too much skin; he's either had his heart broken by those loose women, or he's singing to the good girl left at home while he's out on the town. 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 power ballad and hard rock templates. The mood only lightens at the end of the record, when Kroeger and company take a break from carousing to kick back with bros and a b**g for "This Afternoon" — its strum-along choruses are a relief but so is its mellowness, as Kroeger seems calmer, relaxed, even friendly. Maybe it's because there were no women in the picture.