Feed the Machine

*Feed the Machine* shows Chad Kroeger hasn’t lost his edge since his 2015 vocal-cord surgery. Kroeger and his band strip laptop emperors of their clothes on “Must Be Nice,” invoking nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss. False prophets find a similar dressing down on the title track. “Silent Majority” shows the power in numbers and “Song on Fire” adds another cavernous Nickelback ballad to their trophy case.

Stripping away any of the experimentation and excess that defined 2014's No Fixed Address -- there is no disco, no Imagine Dragons beats, no cameos from Flo Rida -- Nickelback serve up nothing but the basics on Feed the Machine.

The Conservative party of rock records.