Here and Now - Nickelback

ickelback with Curb and The State were okay post-grunge albums that didn't set the world on fire, but were listenable despite Chad Kroeger's rangeless vocals that sound like a third rate cross between Kurt Cobain and Sammy Hagar. However, Silver Side Up had the hit How You Remind Me and led them away from their post-grunge roots. Who knows what would have happened if that song wasn't the biggest rock hit of the current century? Would they be closer to a band like Seether? The route they did take was towards hard rock that sounds more like Buckcherry lite. I have
no problem with bands changing sounds because you could end up with AC/DC syndrome where many will accuse you of releasing a photocopy of your biggest hit album over and over again. This is what Nickelback did with Here and Now. It sounds like a mish-mash of songs styles from All the Right Reasons and Dark Horse.

In fact, this leans closer to Kid Rock's Born Free than anything. A couple songs on here feel like contemporary country songs like what happened with the Remember the Heroes approach of When We Stand Together or the still drunk like This Afternoon, but slightly more somber Don't Ever Let It End. Like the two previous albums, this contains songs similar to the horrendous Something in Your Mouth, Burn it to the Ground, and Animals. Songs like Bottoms Up, Midnight Queen, Gotta Get Me Some, and Everything I Wanna Do go this route with the expected lame results. Of course, a Nickelback album isn't complete without corny ballads like Trying Not to Love You and Holding On to Heaven. Also, like the previous two albums, this has a decent song on it that saves this from a 1/2 star rating. Much like Side of a Bullet or Just To Get High before it, the lyrics seem to hint at their earlier songs, which in this case in Lullaby. It's strange that this is the lightest song on the entire album, but it tackles something that the two songs mentioned go to by at least injecting some meaning to their normally lame lyrics that wouldn't be out of place with a bad KISS song from their 70's heyday. I'd take a fair amount of those over the songs on here. Overall, this is just like their past few albums. If you like those albums, knock yourself out, but I think this album is terrible outside of the okay Lullaby.

Best song: Lullaby

Worst songs: Bottoms Up, When We Stand Together, Midnight Queen, Gotta Get Me Some, Everything I Wanna Do