For the past seven years Nickelback have been warming up their audience with metal band Pantera’s ‘Walk”.
Nickelback: Photo Gerry Nicholls
“It appears to be something to get the people started up with. They appear to like it,” Mike Kroeger tells Noise11.com. “It’s been in our pre-roll of the show for as long as I can remember”.
“I think we’ve been using ‘Walk’ for about seven years,” adds Ryan Peake. “It gets me pumped up. We grew up listening to that. It’s pretty close to us”.
Nickelback and Metal may seem like the odd couple but it gets even odder. Nickelback’s record label Roadrunner is a metal label. “We get a band together and we are not really metal,” Ryan says. “Then a metal label calls us up and wants to sign us and we are like ‘are you sure you’ve got the right number?’ It ended up being such a great match. We’ve had some really great times with Roadrunner”.
Working with a metal label work in Nickelback’s favour. “When you have a metal label you have people who are prepared to fight,” Mike says. “When you are selling that kind of music you have to fight for every inch you get. It doesn’t just happen. Every inch is earned. So they turned out to be a great team to work with for us because they didn’t give up. They kept fighting for us”.
Ryan is the metal fan. “I love metal,” he says. “I grew up listening to metal. We all branched out and started listening to different things. I was raised on country. These guys grew up listening to The Beatles and Zeppelin that are great musically but no necessarily metal”.
Watch the Noise11.com interview with Nickelback.
