All The Right Reasons
Roadrunner, 2005
rating: 0.5/5
reviewer: filmore mescalito holmes


On behalf of all Canadians with a shred of surviving human emotion, post Desperate Housewives and reality TV, I am deeply sorry, America, for poisoning your country with this superficial, cultural sterility. As is custom for each new Nickelback album since 2001, the Vancouver-based derivatives were featured on the cover of Chart, the only Canadian music magazine, for All The Right Reasons; but there was something different this time. They have finally given up pretending to care. After the release of the eight times platinum-selling Silver Side Up back at the turn of the millennium, they were declared Chart's Artist Of The Year. Though they had faced "accusations of creative redundancy" since the day they formed, guitarist Ryan Peake assured fans they were used to having people insinuate they were the exact same kind of cookie cutter, corporate rock, manufactured band as all the 3 Doors Downs and that it didn't bother them in the slightest.

To validate this, November of 2005 saw 3 Doors Down drummer Daniel Adair raving in print about how stoked he was to be a fully fledged Nickelback member, thus proving conclusively all of the charges that always have and always will plague them. Which is more, when The Long Road was released in '03, former drummer Ryan Vikedal said, "With the success of [Silver Side], that was our first foot-in-the-door on a worldwide level. Now... it's up to us to keep pushing forward... it's time to deliver great records." Comments like this are probably why he's gone, as the main Cashback Chad Kroeger now says – after confessing the only reason he's making music is to delay working in a lumber yard for as long as possible like all the also-ran bands they also ran with – "I think we're just trying to keep our fans happy. We're on auto-pilot."

In other words, they're saying "up yours" to trying to express and push themselves. Their plan is to just keep making the same shit till it stops selling, burrowing into the industry like the pestilent tics they are. This is not to say these guys aren't intelligent. While I write this, these chachs are accepting their two times platinum for this very album released not three weeks ago. Krueger obviously knows what his carefully-researched prime demographic wants and admittedly will never deviate from that as long as his brand keeps shifting units at their current levels no matter how much the inborn human desire for artistic integrity stings them.

Every song they've ever been involved in is so obvious and unchallenging that the parallels between every lyric here and every angst-stained rhyming couplet scribbled in your grade ten English notebook are repulsively eerie. Like all Nickelback releases before it, All The Right Reasons was made for all the wrong ones and follows all the formulas and clichés you should be bored to death of by now. Seriously, it's been how many decades of this exact same kind of postured, overproduced, pseudo-emotional wank recycling Payola-style around the Billboard charts? I know I'm not the only one who turns on the radio and experiences that surreal, somewhat uncomfortable sensation of having never heard the newest bought chart topper yet knowing most of the words to it and where all of the predictably shitty changes will happen. It makes my skin crawl just to think about it.

Now, while you may disagree with me about the complete worthlessness of these chump stains, please don't hate Canada. We're all really sorry for Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, and Shania Twain too. But really, America, you bought most of their albums when you really didn't have to. We didn't buy into that missile-defense shield thing you were putting together, remember? It's a free market. But I am Canadian and so, in the spirit of brotherhood and peace, I feel the need to take this opportunity to make amends for us burning the White House down in 1812. You like basketball right? That was one of ours. Look at all the good American tailors and hookers that's currently employing with all those clothing lines, shoes, and events that stay on the road. Call it even? Please... would you please like us? All we ever wanted was to be liked! Ask anybody!!! You'd like us if you got to know us, I swear.

1. Follow You Home
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
9. If Everyone Cared
10. Someone That You're With
11. Rockstar