Rock: Nickleback

Dark Horse *

On paper, Nickelback's formula is a commercial masterstroke. In essence, the Canadian chart-toppers try to reconcile two historically acrimonious strands of hard rock, blending the heavy, humorless riffing of manful acts such as Metallica and Pantera with the debauched, party-all-night mentality of hair metal.

Unfortunately, Nickelback remains perennially stuck in no-man's land. To true metalheads, the band's good-time accessibility and penchant for power ballads brand Nickelback as lightweights. Yet the group's commitment to macho headbanging means it will never be as fun and pop-friendly as it could be.

Nickelback's sixth album, "Dark Horse," finds the guys ratcheting up the sleaze, perhaps in an attempt to keep pace with the recent porn-rock stylings of Buckcherry and Hinder.

However, while pop-metal progenitors such as Poison and Motley Crüe at least made their sin-fests sound somewhat inviting and didn't take themselves too seriously, I'm frightened to think what kind of woman could be titillated by lead singer Chad Kroeger's screamingly insistent, vaguely threatening come-ons.

Nickelback's future strip-club standards may be thoroughly unsexy, but at least they play to the band's strengths, namely swaggering, high-octane riffage.

The requisite power ballads are a far different and more dismal affair. In this case, preferring their meathead sex jams is clearly a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils.