Last Updated on: 4th March 2014, 09:53 am
I just read this in the newspaper, and it might well be one of the greatest album reviews I’ve ever seen.
THREE DAYS GRACE
One X (Sony/BMG)
This repetitious, mind-numbing experience is best summed up by the song titles: Pain, Get Out Alive, Let it Die (not a Feist cover), Time of Dying, and Over and Over. Is there some kind of theme at work here? Supposedly the album was written about the drudgery of being on the road for years at a time, which one supposes is the cost of becoming a million-selling band.
Every lyric can be reduced to “I feel like I could die/ but I’m alive.” That must be about the 23 boring hours of the day versus the one hour concert, but sitting through One X makes it hard to imagine 60 minutes on stage with this band being any more stultifying than the rest of their road dog existence.
To call this formulaic would be a compliment, but Gone Forever is one of the most shameless Nickelback rewrites since — well, Nickelback themselves. Not surprisingly, the Alberta superstars can be found thanked in the liner notes alongside Seether, Staind, 3 Doors Down, Theory of a Deadman and rock radio’s seemingly endless parade of identically beige bands. When Adam Gontier sings, “Somebody help me get through this nightmare,” I feel his pain.