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Nickelback: back with new album Dark Horse

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A true love 'em / hate 'em band, Nickelback are one of the most notable rock successes of the last decade. With an astonishing 26 million albums sold, they are now one of Canada's most successful bands ever.

As the quartet (inevitably) ride back into the charts on new album Dark Horse, MusicRadar digs the dirt and fascinating facts on Nickelback so you don't have to…

1. Hotel receptionists want to kill them (probably)
Ryan Peake and Chad Kroeger break the monotony of the road by checking into hotels as Dr Noah Body and Harry Houdini. Let's just hope the Nickelback wags are never called upon to perform an emergency tracheotomy. Or, indeed, to escape from a straightjacket suspended above a ravine.

2. Chad is a better guitarist than you
Chad Kroeger started as Nickelback's lead guitarist, and has retained his competitive streak. "I'll sit down and have a go with any shredder," he puffed in 2002. "I learned by jamming along with Metallica, Megadeth and Testament, and you cannot play along with those bands without a good right hand."

3. They're not really from Vancouver
Nickelback appeared on the radar playing Green Day covers in the one-moose-town of Hanna, Alberta, but left for Vancouver when Chad decided that a throng of farm-hands didn't constitute 'a fanbase'. "It's impossible to get a band off the ground in Hanna," he reflects. Agriculture's loss was rock 'n' roll's gain.

4. They learnt from the masters
Ryan Peake's bulldozer riffs can be attributed to his first tab books – Metallica's Master Of Puppets and Ride The Lightning. In the perennial 'Hammett vs Hetfield' debate, he's firmly in the big fella's camp: "I was never that into Kirk's playing. James was the guy behind those songs and those rhythms as well."

5. Chad is lucky not to be in jail
Chad's delinquent lyrics are a fair reflection of his juvenile rap sheet, whose highlights include truancy, trespassing and the theft of a small truck. "I honestly think if Nickelback hadn't worked out, I'd be in jail, on a charge of grand theft auto or trafficking," he says. If only Canada had the ASBO...

"I will die on my 40th birthday." Chad Kroeger

6. They splash the cash
The killer hook in How You Remind Me – when the band drop out and Chad bellows 'for handing you a heart worth breaking!' – was the idea of drum tech Andrew Mawhinney.

Chad reflects: "He goes, 'you guys should do a big stop right at the last chorus'. We gave him $5000 just for that suggestion!" Was it really worth five grand?

7. Chad is six years from death…
… according to his calculations, anyway. "I will die on my 40th birthday," he told Playboy. "I dreamed it – I'll be onstage and have a heart attack, and the crowd will think it's part of the show. It's been foretold."

"I think they're great." Chris Martin of Coldplay

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