The guitars begin to take over with 'Worthy to Say,' a surprisingly well-layered track focusing on drug-induced paranoia (no really, check out the lyrics). While the unique structure and quiet-to-loud dynamic is worth noting, nothing else in the song is. Kroeger stands at the front of the first single, 'Leader of Men'. It's even more evident in the album's first song, 'Breathe,' ('All I ever really wanted was / To be like you / So perfect / So worthless / If I could take it all back think again / I would'). Take the final chorus of 'Old Enough' as an example. In several of the songs, the emotional pain of the lyrics sounds quite real. The first half of the songs are lyrically driven, while the second half clearly focus around guitar riffs that repeat several times over the course of most of the verses and/or choruses.Ĭhad Kroeger's voice plays to strengths of the first half of The State. Nickelback's sound on the The State is the same as the straightforward post-grunge of the late 1990s and early 2000s. While they are adored by millions and loathed by critics now, the band's second LP, The State was long before this. It's hard to separate that band from the modern Nickelback and their machine-esque process of album making, to which they seem to have a formula which hasn't changed in a decade (I could spend all day on the comparisons between every album from The Long Road to Here and Now). Imagine a fresh young Nickelback, making the rounds through Canadian towns in the late 90s, trying to promote themselves and their music. Review Summary: 20th Century Nickelback plays in 6/4 and writes about the Holocaust.

The state nickelback album cover