NICKELBACK CHALLENGE THEIR “MOST HATED BAND IN THE WORLD” TITLE

LIVE REVIEW | NICKELBACK | BIRMINGHAM UTILITA ARENA 23/04 by Ollie Hayman

On Thursday night, Canadian rockers Nickelback played to a packed Utilita Arena in Birmingham, a 16,800 capacity arena situated right in the heart of the city centre (definitely NOT the World Resorts Arena where I absolutely did NOT go to first). This was their final of four UK dates before hitting some European arenas.

Opening was The Lottery Winners; a band who have seriously shot to the top in the last year. I first saw them support Frank Turner in a 600-cap venue in January last year, and loved how good they were – not just with their crowd interaction, but their music too. After their brilliant number one album “Anxiety Replacement Therapy” came out last year, it’s safe to say that the quartet from Leigh won’t only be opening at arenas for much longer,

Then came Nickelback. They started with ‘San Quentin‘, the opening track from their most recent album, which heavy riffs lifted the crowd from the off. They then went on to some slower songs, so to speak, with ‘Savin’ Me‘ and ‘Far Away‘ both from what is likely one of their most well known albums, All The Right Reasons. The crowd sang their hearts out to every lyric on the night; not bad for “the most hated band ever” (says the internet, I couldn’t agree less!).

Next came ‘Animals‘ and ‘Someday‘ – quite a contrast of songs to put together, with the former being a heavy song about sneaking out with a girl, and the latter being about making things right again, wondering why a relationship broke down. It’s one of my favourite songs by them so a special one to hear live. Then came a few songs that I wasn’t familiar, however, each track was played extremely well and the majority of the Birmingham crowd knew all the lyrics. It’s safe to say the arena had its roof blown off even before the encore. 

At one point, Chad Kroeger stopped to share about how they first heard of their opening act, The Lottery Winners. If you know the two bands then you’d know it’s a bit of a weird collaboration, however, over lockdown they released a sea shanty version of Nickelback’s hit song ‘Rockstar‘ which swiftly went viral, inviting the superstar Canadian rockers to join in. Next, Chad invites The Lottery Winners back on stage where the two bands joined forces to perform a special rendition of Oasis classic ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger‘. Not only a nod to the band being coming from Manchester, but also as a tribute to the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing during the week of it’s 7th anniversary where the bands played the said arena earlier this week, paying a similar tribute.

Songs that everyone knows came next. First being the viral ‘Photograph‘ which Chad acknowledges, “Some people know this as the ‘look at this graph’ meme, but the rest of you know it as ‘Photograph’, so lets imagine we’re all sat around a campfire” before strumming into an acoustic rendition of the song. Although it has been made into an outright meme in the last few years, it was beautiful to hear in an acoustic setting. After this ended, bassist Mike Kroeger invited an extremely passionate and excited fan onto the stage named Dan who had the chance to sing his heart out to ‘Rockstar‘ – a dream come true for any die-hard Nickelback fan. 

Moving on to ‘Those Days‘ and their most well known song, ‘How You Remind Me‘ which recently surpassed the one billion stream mark on Spotify, which for a “band that no-one likes” is pretty crazy. It was also their last song before the encore, so of course they faked leaving the stage for the final time in the evening!

With the crowd chanting “We want more” and “Nickelback” – the band came back for two more songs. The first being the lighter “Gotta Be Somebody”, which still was a massive hit with the fans. Then came the finale, of what is arguably their heaviest song “Burn It To The Ground”. The song’s heavy riffs and massive guitar tones seriously blew the roof off the Utilita, which after an 8 year wait was definitely deserved. 

Despite my initial arena mix up and a few songs were new to me, the show was still outrageously good. I seem to be saying this a lot recently but it’s a personal gig of the year contender – seems like I’ve got a big shortlist of these at the moment! If you are able to, definitely go and see them in Europe as they’re a must see band!

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