There’s a song on “Everything Under The Sun” with about a million special guests. Sammy Hagar, Tommy Lee, Brent Smith, Joe Bonamassa – you name it, they’re all here. At the centre of “Lift Somebody Up”, though, is Chad Kroeger singing about wanting to reach down and help someone else.
Now, I know we live in a culture where, unless you’re opposing genocide from every pulpit you’ve got, you’re apparently complicit in it – ask James Hetfield. For clarity, I’ve never needed a rock star to tell me how to think, and I don’t need Ed Sheeran to make me understand that Netanyahu is a murderer. It’s obvious. And perhaps the entertainment we get from music, the escape it offers, is doing something worthwhile in itself.
Maybe lifting somebody up is exactly what’s required.
It’s interesting how things come full circle. Ten or fifteen years ago, hating Nickelback seemed almost compulsory. I never quite understood why. If you’d seen them live, you knew they were a really, really good band. Critics might have enjoyed taking their shots – and some will doubtless still pretend there’s nothing here – but try getting a ticket for a UK show. I did. Just about managed it in the end, too.
Their eleventh album, “Everything Under The Sun”, offers pretty much everything you’d want from Nickelback in 2026, alongside a couple of reminders that they can still surprise you.
“Rattle The Cage” gets straight down to business with that classic Nickelback sound, if you will. There’s an effortless way they make everything sound enormous. Other bands work themselves into knots trying to achieve this sort of scale; Nickelback seem to plug in and find it waiting for them.
“Bones For The Crows”, however, has an anger about it that feels particularly striking. This is some distance from the band who gave us “Animals”. There’s a seething quality here, a sense of frustration with the modern world that gives the music a harder edge. Perhaps that’s a perfectly reasonable default position these days.
Crucially, they never lose sight of the chorus. Whatever else you think about Nickelback, their ability to make things this catchy takes some doing. “I Already Know” is exactly the sort of song you wish modern Bon Jovi would come up with: big, immediate and thoroughly assured, with a hook that seems obvious once you’ve heard it. Writing one in the first place is the difficult bit.
“Leave Me Behind” reaches for another familiar weapon: the Nickelback hard rock ballad. You know the type. It builds towards its chorus, you know precisely where it’s heading, and when it arrives you’re powerless to resist. They’re exceptionally good at this stuff.
What’s particularly interesting, though, is how comfortably parts of this record sit alongside modern country. If you listen to much of that music, you’ll recognise something in “If I Don’t Go”. It’s blue collar to its roots, concerned with escaping the hometown, finding something beyond the familiar and wondering what the bright lights might offer.
Perhaps there’s something of Nickelback themselves in that. Perhaps music was always their escape. Either way, the feeling travels well beyond one band’s story.
“Make Me Love You” has the broad appeal of a classic ballad, and there’s a reason it has found its way onto the BBC Radio 2 playlist. Nickelback understand how to give a song room to connect, and how to make that connection feel immediate.
“Chasin’ Famous” brings a different sort of bite. Bouncy and catchy, it delivers an excoriation of influencer culture with the sort of hook that could quite easily soundtrack the very thing it’s taking apart. There’s something rather pleasing about that.
“Simple Song” answers some of the frustration elsewhere with a little togetherness. A bit more peace and love in the world would hardly go amiss, would it? The sentiment is straightforward, and there’s conviction in the way they deliver it.
Then “Technicolor Steamboat” changes the atmosphere completely. Psychedelic and calming, it drifts into a space you might not immediately associate with Nickelback. After all the huge choruses and clenched teeth, the change of pace is welcome. It also suggests that, thirty years into this, they’re quite happy following whatever interests them.
There’s a morning-after feel to the good-time balladry of “Bottled Dreams”, too, another shade on a record that finds room for anger, affection, escape and the simple pleasure of making a big rock song sound absolutely massive.
After all this time, Nickelback don’t appear to give two hoots about whether the people who’ve always disliked them have changed their minds. They’ve got songs to write and crowds to play them to.
And if somebody feels a little better after listening? Well, it’s good for everyone under the sun.
Rating: 8.5/10
