Nickelback: One Rock Band from the Heart

Nickelback is a Canadian rock band originally formed on January 1, 1995, from Hanna, a small town located in Alberta, Canada. The band music is classed as hard rock, post-grunge and alternative rock.  The band has included vocalist/rhythm guitarist Chad Robert Kroeger, bassist Mike Kroeger, Cousin Brandon Kroeger as the drummer and an old friend named Ryan Peake as the guitarist/backing vocalist.

In the early 1990, the band was formed as a cover band named “Village Idiots”. At that time they are playing other people’s song like Led Zeppelin and Metallica and that was so boring to them. After growing tired, Chad convinced his stepfather to land him $4000 to cut their first demo and Nickelback’s first release was a seven track extended play called Hesher in 1996. In the same year they released their first full length album ‘Curb’.

Nickelback officially took shape in 1996 and quickly set to work. Soon after ‘Curb’ Brandon left the band, to be replaced by Mitch Guindon. Guindon stayed only a little while and replaced by Ryan Vikedal. With this new formation, the band mates were managing them selves; Chad courted radio stations, Mike Kroeger handled distribution, Ryan booked shows and Peake maintained the band’s website. In 1998, ‘The State’ was released an independent label, which sold enough copy to get the band signed to the major metal label with Roadrunner and EMI. ‘The State’ was then re-released in 2000 by Roadrunner and EMI with huge commercial success and making a breakthrough in the USA as it reached platinum status while two of its songs “Breathe” and “Leader of Men” entered the top ten of Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks.

 Then they achieved typical success with the released of their 2001 album “Silver Side Up” where the most known hit song even today “How You Reminder Me”, an emotionally introspective, self-contemptuous song about a break-up. The song spent four weeks at number 1 both in US and Canada. Eventually the song ‘How You Reminder Me’ not only boosted “Silver Side Up” to the 2^nd position of the billboard 200 but also helped the albums selling more than nine million copies worldwide. The song brought Nickelback to collect Four Billboard Music Awards of the year 2002 as the category of Hot 100 Singles Group. Some people considered the song as an anthem of sorts of memory of the American victims on the 9/11 incident.

Two years later the band released ‘The Long Road’ (2003). Its lead single was ‘Someday’. The Long Road scored very well as it sold more then five millions copies and Nickelback once again received the multi-platinum status. Three songs of this album “Feelin’ Way Too Damn Good”, “Figured You Out” and “Someday” all were gloriously include in the top three of Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks.

‘The Long Road’ (2003) was the last album for drummer Ryan Vikedal. Former 3 Door Down stickman Daniel Adair replaced Vickdal.At the same time Nickelback returned to Kroeger’s studio in Vencouver to begin work on another album.

The band released the album, “All the Right Reasons” in October 2005. The album proved to be Nickelback’s most popular effort to date, and remaining in the Billboard top 30 for over two years and selling over seven million copies only in U.S. The album produced five U.S. hot 100 top 10 singles namely “Photograph”, “Savin’ Me”, “Far Away”, “If Everyone Cared” and “Rockstar”. Of them three became U.S. Hot 100 top 10 singles.