And then once the riff was down, I think I screamed out this line, 'Can somebody please keep me the hell out of San Quentin? Let’s be totally honest—the hatred for Nickelback has always been overdone, and it’s good to see that people are finally starting to move away from performative ‘worst band ever’ admonishments when there are far easier targets out there. That could be the whole reason Steel Still Rusts is here, as a song about a young man going off to war that’s more a celebration of veterans and soldiers than anything too critical of the US government or war itself (though thankfully, it’s nowhere near as jingoistic as it could be). We don’t have one record that really sort of sounds the same in terms of songwriting from top to bottom.

In early 2019, band members spoke of recording a tenth studio album, though Chad Kroeger conceded there was no timetable or rush for the band to complete it. In truth, it’s probably the ballads that fare the worst, between nostalgia-pandering to the nth degree on Those Days, and a slushy love song in Does Heaven Even Know You’re Missing? You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The album was released on November 18, 2022, with the lead single, San Quentin was released on September 7, 2022. As anticlimactic as that may seem, it’s the truth; Nickelback are too uniformly competent to outright hate, and them boiling down their entire musical existence to a science is clearly still working as far as easy, accessible, unchallenging rock goes.

Look, if you’re actively looking for Nickelback reviews to validate some latent desire to see them torn to shreds and continue the longstanding narrative around them, maybe it’s worth re-examining why that’s something you want. Nickelback is the 11 th best selling musical act of all time with over 50,000,000 units sold and the 2 nd best selling “foreign” group in the U.

You mightn’t like it, and even from the position of recognising there is quality here, it’d be nice if more creative bands got even a fraction of the slice they have, but there are more worthwhile entities in the music industry to hate than this. This is Nickelback’s tenth album, and it couldn’t be clearer how much they’re resting on their laurels; hell, even they themselves probably wouldn’t deny it at this point. Yes, Get Rollin’ can be a pretty middling, pretty unimaginative album at the best of times, but if that still constitutes a belief of ‘worst band ever’, that just feels a bit disingenuous overall. As for the latter, Nickelback clearly know how popular they are and how to win over that existing audience.The Canadian megastars don't merely get away with it – the song's an energised strutter with cool hooks, licks that Lenny Kravitz would nod to, and a flyaway guitar solo that's as good as anything they've done. Especially in the case of Nickelback, theirs is among the most harmless overall, likely a result of its abject broadness and lack of real edge or significant depth. Well, we should have been making a record a lot sooner, with all that time off [due to the coronavirus pandemic].

The album's lead single " San Quentin" was released on September 7, 2022, accompanied by an official lyric video. San Quentin is the obvious standout, as the raucous, driving rocker pivoting closer to metal that’s become an invaluable asset for them in later years, but as far as middle-of-the-road rock goes, Steel Still Rusts and Standing In The Dark take their place among the band’s established canon with fair ease. When the subject of a release date came up, Mike said “it’ll be done when it’s done”, explaining that he and band would rather not be confined to a timescale for fear of making “a shitty record”. But it almost feels compulsory to start off any long-form discussion of Nickelback with a statement like that, as it has done for years.

I’m gonna play this guitar solo 40 more times for another three days and make sure it’s just exactly how we want it as opposed to deadline, deadline, deadline.