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Nickelback is sick of your shit. After realizing it’s really embarrassing when Avril Lavigne has to stick up for your shitty band, Chad Kroeger and company began lashing out at anyone basic enough to make Nickelback jokes in this second half of the ’10s.
That included Hollywood strongman Arnold Schwarzenegger, who the band reminded of his pun-filled turn as Mr. Freeze after he cracked that Congress was less popular than Nickelback. Then, Kroeger took a shot at Slipknot/Stone Stour frontman Corey Taylor, calling the former band a gimmick and the latter “Nickelback Lite.” Taylor responded by saying Kroeger’s face looks “like a foot.” Truly, it was a feud for the ages.
(Read: If We’re Being Totally Fair: Nickelback’s Five Least Awful Songs)
Unfortunately for Nickelback, their new, take-no-shit ‘tude doesn’t exactly lend itself to record sales. As Metal Sucks points out, Nickelback’s latest album, Feed the Machine, sold 47,000 units in its first week, which is 42% fewer copies than their last album, 2014’s No Fixed Address. In fact, it’s their lowest first-week sales since the band first appeared on the scene in the early ’00s. That said, the drop-off between No Fixed Address and 2011’s Here and Now was much larger, with the former selling 80,000 units against the latter’s 227,000 units.
Granted, in an era where pretty much nobody sells actual CDs anymore, 47,000 units is still really good. But the sales figures of these last two albums nevertheless point towards an audience that’s rapidly “souring” on the butt-rockers. Thank Corey Taylor for that, or thank the rise of music streaming services that have introduced listeners to better music. Nickelback’s reign of terror, it seems, may finally be coming to an end.