Even on its ‘heavy’ moments, that still applies (even if both Skinny Little Missy and Vegas Bomb end up clunkier and more heavy-footed than particularly powerful). During an interview with WRAT radio station, lead vocalist Chad Kroeger spoke about the lyrical inspiration for "San Quentin", saying: "I met the San Quentin prison warden at a party. They aren’t a band with the sort of catalogue that welcomes it; instead, they’ve made lowest-common-denominator rock music forever, with occasionally the mildest change-up that’s never affected the payoff even slightly. As for the latter, Nickelback clearly know how popular they are and how to win over that existing audience.

Especially in the case of Nickelback, theirs is among the most harmless overall, likely a result of its abject broadness and lack of real edge or significant depth. We don’t have one record that really sort of sounds the same in terms of songwriting from top to bottom.But it’s weird to say this, but for 25 years it feels like someone’s been standing behind us with a cattle prod and telling us, ‘Hey, the record’s gotta be done at this time. When the subject of a release date came up, Mike said “it’ll be done when it’s done”, explaining that he and band would rather not be confined to a timescale for fear of making “a shitty record”. I’m gonna play this guitar solo 40 more times for another three days and make sure it’s just exactly how we want it as opposed to deadline, deadline, deadline.

To be fair, they’re playing around with some spacier production touches on Tidal Wave and Just One More, or slight country-rock flavour on Steel Still Rusts; neither add any nutrition to the existing meat-and-potatoes radio-rock, but they work for what they’re going for. You mightn’t like it, and even from the position of recognising there is quality here, it’d be nice if more creative bands got even a fraction of the slice they have, but there are more worthwhile entities in the music industry to hate than this.The highs aren’t very high, but they’re serviceable enough; even when the formula is being as rinsed as it is, there’s a certain bar of quality that Nickelback can hit in their sleep. Nickelback haven't released a studio album in more than five years, but to paraphrase one of their biggest hits, Get Rollin' is how they remind us of what we've been missing. If anything, it’s a similar end to where a lot of country music was in the 2010s, slightly in execution but mostly in ethos.