Nickelback’s Mike Kroeger Talks Further About His Love of Slayer
In an interview last year, Nickelback bassist Mike Kroeger (brother of vocalist/guitarist Chad) made headlines in the metal world by talking about his love of Slayer, Gojira, Meshuggah and Animals as Leaders, saying “I would do a Slayer cover album if I could. That’s where my heart lies. There are just never enough hours in the day to do everything, but let’s just say I wouldn’t count it out.” Many folks who lack basic reading comprehension skills took that to mean Nickelback would be covering Slayer, so Kroeger was forced to issue a clarification that he was only speaking for himself, not the rest of the band. In that same follow-up interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Kroeger also revealed his love of that state’s finest metal export, Scissorfight. Dude is legit!
The Slayer issue is one that will likely follow Kroeger as long as he’s doing interviews, and it came up again during a recent appearance on WSOU. Referencing last year’s remarks, he said:
“There was a little bit of context manipulation in that Wall Of Sound interview. What I said was that I, Mike, personally would like to do a Slayer cover record — not Nickelback. And that was maybe a mistake on my part, ’cause I left it too easy to be reinterpreted. But the fact is when we did [Nickelback’s 2017 album] ‘Feed The Machine’, there was a real intent to make it firmly a rock album — a hard rock record. That was really what we wanted it to be. And we, I think, executed that, and our fans have given us the approval that we did, in fact, make a good hard rock record.
“Now, as far as Nickelback going ahead and making a power metal album, that isn’t gonna happen. I wouldn’t mind being involved in something like that personally, just because that’s the kind of music I listen to, but the rest of my band doesn’t share my taste in things like Slayer. Well, the drummer does; Daniel [Adair], he likes Slayer.
“I think it was more of a clickbait thing than anything else, because just consider it — a guy from Nickelback says they wanna make a Slayer cover album. The entire metal community is in uproar. [Laughs] It’s so easy, right? You wanna get some clicks? That’s one way of doing it.”
Touché, Mike, them’s some easy clicks. But we also happen to like your band a lot now (we’re cheap dates), and wholly welcome a new Nickelback album whether it’s heavy or not. Meanwhile, we’ll be over here at the MS Mansion jamming Scissorfight at top volume.
Asked if he thinks the next Nickelback album will continue in the heavier vein of their prior release, Kroeger answered:
“I really hope it’s heavier, just ’cause that’s what makes my pulse go up. I don’t know yet. It’s not like we have the thing in the can — it’s not all recorded — so we’re still finding out what’s gonna happen. We don’t know yet.
“If I had to predict, I would say there’s probably gonna be a wide-ranging body of work here. There’s gonna be the songs that people will wanna listen to when they’re having a fun social event, and there’s gonna be other songs when you wanna do the steering-wheel drums and bash away at something that’s got a heavy metal kind of bent to it. I think we’re gonna have everything across the board, really. I believe that’s probably what’s gonna happen. As much as I would just like to make cover-to-cover metal, there’s probably gonna be songs for the people who like the more melodic love songs, and there’s probably gonna be the heavy stuff too.”
We are here for it, Mike.
[via Blabbermouth]
