Nickelback

If colleges offered a course called Make It On Modern Rock Radio and Actually Succeed For More Than 15 Minutes, Nickelback’s hit list — including the #1 2005 album All the Right Reasons, which went seven-times platinum here in the States — could fill the syllabus handsomely, with its torch ballads and brawny-but-always-catchy exercises in meaty guitar and no-nonsense hooks. If you like to measure success in stats, swallow this amazing testament to the Canadian band’s powers: they were the second-best-selling foreign act in the U.S. during the ’00s — behind the Beatles. Exhibit-A: “Rockstar,” which gets us underway in blistering fashion. Nickelback sets off some thunder, in Next Steps.

revealing the band’s way with tender melodies via reflective songs like “If Today Was Your Last Today” from 2008’s Dark Horse, produced by famed AC/DC and Def Leppard collaborator Mutt Lange, who makes sure no ballad on the album lacks heft. There’s no shortage of dynamite, either, as “Flat On the Floor” and “Because of You” — a couple of raging neo-grunge firestorms from 2008’s The Long Road — remind us why the predominantly metal label Roadrunner signed Nickelback in the first place. “Where?,” from 1996 studio debut Curb, returns us to the source of the inferno.

Cover bands and Canadians take note: you, too, could enjoy a future topping charts and monopolizing the memory banks of rock radio-listeners with your singles. Just look at Nickelback, who went from rocking bars in Calgary to packing arenas on the strength of songs that are heavy without being intimidating and poppy without ever becoming boring or a bit too familiar. No wonder the four-piece (formed in 1996) is stronger than ever and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Dive into this sampler, featuring reflective tracks (“Far Away”), frontman Chad Kroeger’s volcanic solo vocal on “Hero,” from the Spider-Man soundtrack, along with multiple shots of post-Alice In Chains voltage (“Little Friend,” “Fly”).