Like a grinning king upon its throne, the hitmaking Canadian quartet known as Nickelback has long held a dominance over the modern rock ballad from high atop the charts.  In 2001, its breakout single “How You Remind Me” hit the airwaves to both engage and disgust music subjects unalike and its last album, All the Right Reasons, capped out at a whopping eight-times platinum, proving Nickelback to be the dark horse rock artist of its era despite the objections of rock purists.  On its latest release, aptly titled Dark Horse, the group has reason to gloat about its underdog status.  Nickelback is now expert at the sound it’s built upon and it isn’t leaving the airwaves anytime soon. 

Led by singer/lyricist Chad Kroeger, the band is probably Canada’s biggest bunch of tender hard rockers to hit the mainstream since Bryan Adams arrived stateside.  Like Adams, another collaborator/protégé of Dark Horse producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, Nickelback knows the power of the great rock ballad and how to play up the image of the sensitive bad boy.  Like Adams, Kroeger croons, but also knows when to turn up the amps.  With a vocal style cranked up to at least nine on every track, he hasn’t met a double entendre he didn’t like or a nostalgia-soaked ballad he couldn’t make you sing along with.  The rockers are dirty come-ons, the ballads emotional odes to love and heartbreak.  A beer in one hand, a lighter in the other.

Nickelback certainly needed a place to go following its last multiplatinum milestone, so to reach even loftier heights, it sought out the production wizardry of Lange, who after coming up the ranks with AC/DC and Foreigner, made good on his promise to turn Hysteria, the comeback album by British pop metalists Def Leppard, into the Thriller of rock records before infusing his production style onto an unknown Canadian diamond in the rough named Shania Twain.  Lange’s touch made Twain the modern queen of Nashville, kind of a slinky Country Leppard, and helped infuse a massive pop/rock element into the genre that has yet to let up.

A curious, but mostly innocuous pairing, Lange’s typical production style is mostly unobtrusive here, allowing the Nickelback sound to edge out over the “Mutt Lange sound.”  A few patented trademarks remain over the 11 tracks, chiefly Lange’s penchant for thunderous, echo-laden drums and backing vocal chants (group vocals with “hey!”s and “oooh”s, Lange favorites, appear throughout), but overall, Nickelback delivers a set of short, punchy bruisers and soft, tender wailers with only minor traces of the pop metal and country twang the producer has perfected over the years.

Dark Horse is an album equal parts raunch and introspection. “Something In Your Mouth” kicks things off with a pounding groove, ably backed by Nickelback’s sturdy mainstays, guitarist Ryan Peake, bassist Mike Kroeger and drummer Daniel Adair.  This danceable headbanger, the best of the album, drives forward, offering Kroeger’s mesmerized take on a “gifted” stripper.  “Burn it to the Ground” similarly keeps the pace up with some brisk, shuffling metal as, punctuated by vocal chants, Kroeger and company declare their intention to hit the town and drink to the point of destruction.  Elsewhere, “Next Go Round” maintains the high energy with hard-chugging guitars.  Easily the fastest track on the album, the bass grooves across the verse and Peake gets to stomp around with a wah-soaked solo.  Since Lange usually has a song bound to remind listeners of Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” stylings, we get the countrified Leppard grind of “Shakin’ Hands,” another song about a pleasure giver.  This time it’s a high-class hooker in Hollywood Kroeger’s focused his anthropological skills upon.  Meanwhile, the low, mid-paced bass of “S.E.X.” reveals plans that probably do not entail staying in for the evening and playing solitaire.

Of course all this sex is really masking Kroeger’s sentimental heart, as evidenced by the album’s secret weapon, its plentiful ballads.  “Gotta Be Somebody” is a terrific mid-paced pop-rocker accentuated by rippling guitars and soft keyboards, with Kroeger pouring his heart out about loneliness and the painful search for someone meaningful.  Looking for “somebody else that feels the same somewhere,” Kroeger cries declaratively, “there’s gotta be somebody for me like that.”  “I’d Come for You” is another stand-out with a lush, melodic intro.  Despite following the Nickelback ballad template, the verses build to a satisfying apex, with Kroeger laying it on the line to a discarded lover.  Nickelback can probably write such material in its sleep at this point, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when songs like these are as catchy as they are.

“Just to Get High” delves into moody territory, a rocking ballad chronicling the descent of one of Kroger’s friends into drug addiction.  The tune pulses with chorus-laden electric guitars, segueing into a heavy chorus as Peake knocks out another wicked guitar solo.  Stepping into the time machine for a bit, “Never Gonna Be Alone” is an acoustic-driven ballad capturing the sentiments of devotion in the time-honored tradition of Bon Jovi’s “I’ll Be There for You.”  This could easily have fit on one of BJ’s classic albums or Leppard’s sugar-dipped Adrenalize, but the album’s catchiest ballad, the shimmering “If Today Was Your Last,” soars with just a touch of steel guitar, a few layers of acoustic and lightly electrified guitars, offering a genuine reminder to simply live life to the fullest.

Nickelback is a radio-friendly band, so it’s hard to be indignant about an album like Dark Horse.  It’s a great diversion, a well-made release from a band that simply knows what its fans expect and, for the most part, delivers.  Anyone who likes Nickelback shouldn’t worry about being left in the dark by this Dark Horse.