With their fourth album,
All the Right Reasons,
Nickelback ditches any pretense of being a
grunge band and finally acknowledges they're a straight-up heavy
rock band. Not that they've left the angst of
grunge behind: they're a modern
rock band living in a
post-grunge world, so there's lots of tortured emotions threaded throughout the 11 songs here. But where their previous albums roiled with anger -- their breakthrough
"How You Remind Me" was not affectionate, it was snide and cynical -- there's a surprisingly large sentimental streak running throughout
All the Right Reasons, and it's not just limited to heart-on-sleeve power
ballads like
"Far Away" and
"Savin' Me," the latter being the latest entry in their soundalike sweepstakes. No, lead singer/songwriter
Chad Kroeger is in a particularly pensive mood here, looking back fondly at his crazy times in high school on
"Photograph" ("Look at this photograph/Every time I do it makes me laugh/How did our eyes get so red?/And what the hell is on Joey's head?"), lamenting the murder of
Dimebag Darrell on
"Side of a Bullet" (where a
Dimebag solo is overdubbed), and, most touching of all, imagining "the day when nobody died" on
"If Everyone Cared" (which would be brought about "If everyone cared and nobody cried/If everyone loved and nobody lied"). Appropriately enough for an album that finds
Kroeger's emotional palette opening up,
Nickelback tries a few new things here, adding more pianos, keyboards, and acoustic guitars to not just
ballads, but a few of their big, anthemic rockers; they even sound a little bit light and limber on
"Someone That You're With," the fastest tune here and a bit of relief after all the heavy guitars. All this makes for a more varied
Nickelback album, but it doesn't really change their essence. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine