Photo Credit – Stu Garneys (21st May – O2 Arena, London)
Canadian rockers Nickelback brought their Get Rollin’ tour to Glasgow for the first night of the short UK tour with the band announcing that hey had arrived in the UK six days previously in order to prepare for the tour “including getting very drunk” according to vocalist/guitarist Chad Kroeger. Here is a band that have a such a massive back catalogue that fans would have been wondering what songs they would get to hear from their heroes, all would be revealed soon but first up were tonight’s support band The Lottery Winners, a band we have been championing at Bring The Noise for a while but remain relatively unknown in the mainstream music scene. All that would change tonight as the band played easily the biggest gig of their lives, there must have been over 10,000 in the arena in time for the support act. In contrast when we saw them play at The Arts Club Loft at Sound City a couple of weeks previously there were only around 400 fans in the room that night!
As The Lottery Winners took to the stage at 7.30pm to a loud cheer vocalist Thom Ryceland began his comical onstage antics by walking back off and asking the crowd to give him a much louder cheer which they did to the delight of the band. We already knew how much fun their gigs are but it was good to look around and see how much other people were enjoying themselves so much listening to a band they were only hearing for the first time tonight. Ryceland had the fans join in with opener Worry and Letter To Myself is written around the vocalist writing a letter as a 12 year old and forgetting about it until years later when he used it to write the song, which has some entertaining lyrics. At this point we should remind you why they are actually here tonight, they did a collaboration with Nickelback for their track Rockstar during the pandemic in a sea shanty style, the song went viral and as they say the rest is history. The 40-minute set went by very quickly as the crowd joined in the last two songs Start Again and Burning House, the band certainly won over a good few fans with this performance tonight. 8/10.
The Hydro was filled to capacity as Nickelback took to the stage around 8.45pm to the biggest roar from the fans as Pantera’s hit Walk played over the speakers it didn’t go without notice that the drummer Daniel Adair was wearing a Pantera t-shit. The band dived straight into the 2022 album Get Rollin’ with opener San Quentin being the perfect start as the fans joined in with Brad Kroeger “Screaming every night, playing 25 to life/So Somebody, please keep me the hell out of San Quentin” which was a great start. We were then treated to three tracks from the 1995 album All The Right Reasons, starting with Savin’ Me when guitar Tech Rob Dawson came on stage to play guitar alongside the band to the crowds delight before Far Away and Animals were played. The excitement built during Someday and Figured You Out, taken from the band’s 2003 album The Long Road, the latter of the tracks saw t-shirt cannons being fired from the stage into the crowd, but none were fired our way sadly! Rhythm guitarist Ryan Peake took over vocal duties for Worthy To Say allowing Brad to fully focus on his awesome guitar playing skills. Hangnail was brought out to be played live for the first time since 2019 and it went down a storm with the fans.
There was a nice surprise for everyone when The Lottery Winners came back out to the stage to lead a cover version of the Oasis track Don’t Look Back In Anger in which the 13000 or so in the arena joined in creating an amazing memory and we think even the members of Nickelback were stunned by the response to this. If Liam Gallagher’s version of the song is as good as this one then he will have nothing to worry about when he plays here next month! After we all got our breath back the All The Right Reasons album was revisited one last time with an acoustic version of Photograph which Brad played to perfection and the band reappearing on stage near the end of the track. It was then time for the band to pick out an audience member to help sing Rockstar and tonight 18 year old Amy was selected, we think she may have been a bit starstruck but did her best to enjoy the Andy Warhol moment. Surprisingly we only got two tracks from the 2022 Get Rollin’ album, Those Days being the second of the night during the seventeen-song set. How You Remind Me gave the fans another chance to get excited before the show was stopped during the second chorus in order for a fan to gain medical attention. She was soon passed over the front barrier and all was well again and the band very skilfully continuing the song from exactly where they left off. The two song encore were both from the 2008 album Dark Horse, Gotta Be Somebody and Burn It To The Ground and were the perfect end to a great night of music. Nickelback were excellent tonight all round and if you are lucky enough to see them live then your in for a treat. The band are heading out to Europe for more dates before heading back to tour in North America during the summer. 10/10.
Written by: Alan Brown
