Chad Kroeger of Nickelback performs at GM Place in Vancouver, June 3, 2010.Jeff Vinnick
Nickelback
- At GM Place
- In Vancouver on Thursday
It was an irritating way to kick things off. The sold-out audience at Vancouver's GM Place jumped out of its collective skin to what sounded like amplified gunshots.
But it got our attention. A black curtain dropped to reveal the band that has been deemed both the world's most despised and most celebrated - Canada's own Nickelback. They launched into their big, anthemic fist-pumper Burn It to the Ground, punctuated with giant bursts of flame that heated the faces of the first 10 rows.
Front man Chad Kroeger said something about going down memory lane as an introduction to the tepid Photograph, from 2005 album All the Right Reasons. His 15,000 or so fans, mostly twentysomethings, were treated to lots of goofy-face band shots that looked extremely posed.
And then it began: the evening's alcohol-centric theme. Kroeger evidently can't get enough of the stuff.
"We're going to do shots between every single song till the end of the show," he promised.
As befits a rock star, he alluded to the drugs, too. He mentioned his penchant for "the best weed in the world" and for "a fungus that you make into tea and it helps you get lost for eight hours."
"You wind up with songs that sound like this," he explained, perhaps not intending it to sound that way. The band then dived into Leader of Men, followed by Savin' Me, the kind of emotionally charged rock power ballad on which they've built their world-dominating career.
For about 15 years, Nickelback has been on a chart-topping tear. Nothing, it seems, can stop them. As a result of their commercial ubiquity, they've attracted the wrath of a legion of naysayers - such as the woman who launched a Facebook fan page for a pickle with the express purpose of acquiring more fans than the Nickelback fan page. The pickle won.
Kroeger appears unfazed by his band's uncool standing. And he found a lot of alcohol Thursday night. There was no end to the Jägermeister, the tequila, the Crown Royal and the beer. It's evidently what you need when it's the last night of a big tour and you're back on home soil.
But if this band seems like an easy target, they make no bones about crafting near-genius amalgamations of other artists' sounds into something that's critic-proof, universally loved and, at times, weirdly appealing to even the most jaded set of ears. A country rocker such as Rockstar, for example, is a perfect match for Kroeger's craggy voice and working-class ease with stories of loose women and drunken nights in bars. It's everything Nickelback is supposed to be: exaggerated, unpretentious, grade-A commercial rock 'n' roll.
Every song was delivered true to form, and with a lung-shaking wall of guitars. They'd work their way through hard-luck songs such as Too Bad and Gotta Be Somebody, then switch to a few bars of a cover song such as Journey's Small Town Girl.
They were fan-friendly, spending several songs seated on a catwalk protruding into the audience. They also handed out shooters and spent way too long instructing roadies to shoot T-shirts into the crowd with those ridiculous T-shirt cannons.
"We're taking you to the beach now, Vancouver," said Kroeger, asking everyone to picture it. "I have a small mountain of ice-cold kegs behind me."
Of course he does.
They then launched into the hit that put them in the rarefied air of a band that has sold over 30 million records, How You Remind Me from 2001's Silver Side Up. Who on the planet doesn't know that song? It still managed to get the crowd of hard-core fans revved up and the mosh pit roiling. After all, they didn't vote for a pickle.
Special to The Globe and Mail