Nickelback - Silver Side Up

Following Staind's footsteps, Nickelback make the personal public and vent a history of frustration and resentment to melodic hard rock. The band's second album, Silver Side Up, starts with "Never Again," an angry tirade against domestic violence that sheds light on the issue without too much sap or sentiment. The album's catchy radio hit "How You Remind Me" and the song "Woke Up This Morning" tell of rotting relationships, while other tracks touch on damaged hope and lost dreams. The post-grunge, alt-metal combo backing these songs packs as strong a punch as the lyrical material, going hard with lots of hooks. The additional slide guitar on "Hangnail" and sludgy, alt-metal riffs on "Hollywood," "Money Bought," and "Where Do I Hide" add a little meat to the alt-rock bones on Silver, elevating Nickelback above the heap of copycat rockers clogging the airwaves. --Jennifer Maerz Amazon.com

Makes me wish I didn't have ears.

Whenever I hear these singles on the radio, I want to gouge my ears with an ice pick just so I never have to hear another Nickelback song. I flip through 4 stations and sometimes all 4 are playing Nickelback(or someone trying to sound like them). If this is the sound of this generation, then music is dead. June 19, 2008

Hard Work Lands Silver Side Up

Nickelback is one of those bands that critics and "real music" fans hate, while their fans lap it up in droves. To me, they are the typical saga of a hard-working road-warrior band that finally grabbed the brass ring. Listening to "Silver Side Up" drives the 'bar band makes good' tag home, with a caveat inserted...I pretty much like this album.

Granted, Nickelback distills their favorite bands into an easily digestible sound. Soundgarden and Alice In Chains seem likely contributors, but in my heart, this reaches back to all the travelling bands of the 80's like Reo Speedwagon, Head East or BTO from the 70's. Singer Chad Kroeger has a distinctive if not very distinguished voice, the songs are generic grunge-lite, and the band throws in "issues" to make themselves relevant. When the lead song on your album is a chord bashing revenge song about an abused spouse who fights back, well, it ain't your typical party anthem stuff.

However, that happens to be the best thing here (and when you remind yourself that the followup The Long Road's "Figured You Out" is a song about debasing someone sexually, it seems off-kilter), and the album soon begins to sound like the same song 9 different ways. That's not to say that Nickelback is bad, they stand out from most of the early century grungettes (Staind, Puddle Of Mudd, Incubus, etc) that seem to think sounding heavy substitutes for good songwriting. And if there's one thing this band has a knack for, it is laying down a hook, over and over. Both "How You Remind Me" and "Too Bad" deal in sour topics (a cynical break-up and growing up without a father) while sticking to the roof of your brain.

So critical and snobs be dammed. "Silver Side Up" matters most to the folks that buy CD's. In a time when hardly anyone, even the heavy hitters, can sell past gold, Nickelback (along with Daughtry) was one of the very few rock acts to go multi-platinum in 2007. From the POV of the jury of purchasing peers, their workmanlike chops and rock-cum-pop sense gets the last laugh. March 4, 2008

My thoughts

First Nickelback CD I bought , now I have the Silver side up + Live at Home DVD 2 disc set , witch ever one you buy is fine , the CD is the same ,but if your a big fan , buy the 2 disc set version. August 6, 2007

Nickelback's best album!

After getting "All the Right Reasons" I got all of Nickelback's older albums. While all are very good, I like this one the best. It has a grungy, hard-rock edge to it that I like and all of the songs on this album are very good!

The songs that stand out on this album are "Never Again", "Too Bad", "Just For", "Woke Up This Morning", "Money Bought" and "Good Times Gone". I do not like "How You Remind Me" too much because of all of the radio airplay it got when the song became popular. In my view, the overplay on the radio killed "How You Remind Me".

While I understand the frustration of many who say that Nickelback "sold out" because they decided to go more mainstream. However, I think they were developing their sound like many other bands do and see no difference between Nickelback's sound development and Soundgarden's doing the same thing.

While Soundgarden is, by far, a superior band (I have all of their CDs too), I can appreciate Nickelback's approach since they obviously have to balance making music and selling albums in order to make a living.

I think down the line Nickelback can "return to their roots" and crank out an album just as good as this one. It worked for The Scorpions and Pearl Jam and I think it can happen for these guys too. July 5, 2007

Silver Side Up

This is the only Nickleback CD that is a must have.
It is Great! May 6, 2007

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