Nickelback stints on emotion in Camden show

Nickelback, the critically despised, audience-adored quartet that packed Camden's Susquehanna Center on Saturday, has found a way to mash the soft rock and hair metal of the '80s and the grunge and emo of the '90s into something that's sold more than 30 million albums.

Seems the cash-outs have gotten better for these post-grunge Canadian dudes who named their band after cheap tippers from one member's first job at Starbucks.

With his shouted-out, sullen lyrical platitudes and his hair in full flipping mode, Chad Kroeger made for an odd front man. He scuffed up his clarion-clear vocals as though mangling silk with Brillo pads.

His shimmering gruffness, handily accompanied by the lush harmonies of his mates, was reminiscent of Def Leppard at its anthem-making best. (Producer Mutt Lange handled Def Lep and Nickelback).

Yet, while Def Lep managed to keep big semblances of sex within its panicked roar, Kroeger and company steered clear of emotions that were too angry or too sensual.

Though he rhapsodized about drunken bouts, sorrowful loss, and carnal conquests throughout Nickelback's snappiest, churning rockers and earnest ballads (or, like "Gotta Be Somebody," in between those extremes) Kroeger could have been singing about loose-leaf.

It wasn't awful, just coldly precise; incapable of generating heat and truth.

He may have been joking when he introduced a big, strummy song ("If Everyone Cared") with a warning of its being able to "touch your soul." Yet it was as though Kroeger were making a sales pitch to your better senses.

The one song that came off as sincere - if not a wee bit saccharine - was "Photograph," probably because its chatter regarding high school's escapades ("How did our eyes get so red?/What the hell's on Joey's head?") was close to Kroeger's between-song patter of dirty jokes and profession of love for AC/DC, whose "Highway to Hell" Nickelback covered with abandon.

More of that Nickelback might be in order.