"THE LONG ROAD" NICKELBACK
*** our of five
Nickelback's third album, "The Long Road," is a blend of both hard rock and soft ballads. Songs such as "Throw Yourself Away" and "Flat on the Floor" are very hard, with fast guitar riffs and strong drum beats. Nearly half of the songs on this album seem to scream hard rock. Ballads like "Someday" and "Should've Listened" have the slow chord progression and soft or no drum hits.
With music changing pace from song to song, the lyrics seem to stand out more. In the song "Feelin' Way too Damn Good," Chad Kroeger, the band's lead singer, tells about being away from his significant other, and the feeling he has when she is near him. He says at one point, "I missed you so much that I begged you to come and see me...but now that you're here I just feel like I'm constantly dreaming, cause something's gotta go wrong cause I'm feelin' way too damn good." Then in the song "Another Hole in the Head" the singer switches gears and says, "I need you probably as bad as I need another hole in the head." This switch seems warranted though, as the tones and tempos of the songs are completely opposite. With every change in song the feeling of the album seems to change.
This album shows a new shift in music trends today. Its quick changes between fast power songs and slow ballads show a blur in the lines between genres of music that seems to be growing more and more popular by the year. With the splice of rap and rock that is now known as "Nu-metal," hybrids between other genres didn't seem far off. Although "The Long Road" is not a complete hybrid of genres, its frequent changes in style seem to hint at the next splice: A splice between emotional rock, otherwise known as "emo," and the hard rock of old. Yet that is not necessarily a bad thing.
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