After all, this is an album that ends with 'See You at the Show,' the neo-grunge 'We're an American Band' that invites their audience to come along on the Nickelback bus and party down - a sentiment that kind of undercuts the endless barrage of tortured lyrics that precede it. Perhaps Kroeger and his cohorts in Nickelback are also fueled by real angst and just aren't capable of turning it into art, but 2003's The Long Road, the follow-up to their 2001 breakthrough, Silver Side Up, suggests that they really are just heavy-rock hucksters. Of course, on the surface grunge was just modern hard rock, but upon further inspection it was an interesting, unruly beast, fueled by genuine passion and angst, which is why each band had a distinct sound and a different way of fleeing from the scene when it all became too much. Nickelback courts it through their audience-pleasing grunge pastiche, which treats the style as just another variation of hard rock. Those three bands were unpredictable and, in various ways, shunned success when they received it. Throughout that year and into the next, the band and its ham-fisted lead singer Chad Kroeger, who always seems on verge of a hernia, were omnipresent as they peddled their cleaned-up, streamlined amalgam of Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam. Thanks to their smash number one hit 'How You Remind Me,' Nickelback became the poster boys for neo-grunge in 2001.

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