Nickelback's 'Dark Horse,' Running on Empty

A few years from now, our children will ask us three vexing questions:

"What is sex?"

"Why do people die?"

And "What's a Nickelback?"

The last one may be the hardest to answer, with our landfills choked by abandoned copies of the Canadian rock troupe's irredeemable releases.

Since its 2001 breakout, Nickelback has become a perplexing, platinum-selling punching bag of a band, climbing higher and higher up the charts and into critics' collective craw with some of the most stultifying rock hits of the decade. The title of the group's sixth album, "Dark Horse," is particularly odd considering that the foursome has become one of the most reliable, highest-selling rock machines in today's wilted music industry.

But with "Dark Horse," leonine frontman Chad Kroeger spends no time grousing about his detractors, instead embracing the classic tropes of rock-star hedonism. He offers cartoonish tales of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, all in an ill-fitting growl that belies the good times he's supposedly celebrating. As a result, "Dark Horse" evokes a post-grunge Bizarro World, a place that tries to reconcile Seattle's austere yesteryears with the Sunset Strip's hair-metal heyday.

Nickelback outlines its party plan with "Burn It to the Ground," the song's brawny guitars soundtracking a bacchanal where Kroeger aims to "drink everything in sight." But when it comes to pleasures of the flesh, he uses the chorus of "S.E.X." to wrap a come-on in a koan: "Sex is always the answer/It's never a question, 'cause the answer's yes."

If that refrain doesn't make a Nickelback fan out of R. Kelly, perhaps this couplet from "Next Go Round" will do the trick: "I wanna cover you with Jell-O in the tub/We can roll around for hours without ever coming up."

To hear all of this sung in the same throaty growl that Kroeger applies to his melodramatic ballads? Yuck. And yes, "Dark Horse" has its share of melodramatic ballads, including the single "Gotta Be Somebody," its overblown chorus sprinkled with flavorless, chiming U2-isms. Famed AC/DC producer Mutt Lange often helps Nickelback flex its muscles on "Dark Horse," but here, he scrubs the proceedings clean of anything distinctive.

That leads our ears back to Kroeger's lyric sheet, which finds him proselytizing about the evils of prostitution and drug addiction (on "Shakin' Hands" and "Just to Get High," respectively). After all of Kroeger's crass blustering on "Dark Horse," the last place he deserves to be is on his high horse.

DOWNLOAD THIS: "Burn It to the Ground"