Nickelback bassist Mike Kroeger has clarified his comments about his desire to make a “heavier” album with his band one day. Back in January 2019, Kroeger told Australia's Wall of Sound that metal is “what I listen to without fail” and added that “if we could actually sink in and do a metal album, all four of us would love it. I know that we're all — on differing scales — metalheads at our core. We all know everything about the 'Big Four' — METALLICA, MEGADETH, ANTHRAX and SLAYER. I would do a SLAYER cover album if I could. That's where my heart lies. There are just never enough hours in the day to do everything, but let's just say I wouldn't count it out.”
Kroeger later offered a different take on the possibility of recording a SLAYER cover album, explaining that he never said Nickelback as a band would partake in such a project. He told WSOU, “There was a little bit of context manipulation in that Wall Of Sound interview. What I said was that I, Mike, personally would like to do a SLAYER cover record — not NICKELBACK. And that was maybe a mistake on my part, 'cause I left it too easy to be reinterpreted. But the fact is when we did NICKELBACK's 2017 album 'Feed The Machine', there was a real intent to make it firmly a rock album — a hard rock record. That was really what we wanted it to be. And we, I think, executed that, and our fans have given us the approval that we did, in fact, make a good hard rock record.”
She continued, “Now, as far as NICKELBACK going ahead and making a power metal album, that isn't gonna happen. I wouldn't mind being involved in something like that personally, just because that's the kind of music I listen to, but the rest of my band doesn't share my taste in things like SLAYER. Well, the drummer does; Daniel Adair, he likes SLAYER. I think it was more of a clickbait thing than anything else, because just consider it — a guy from NICKELBACK says they wanna make a SLAYER cover album. The entire metal community is in uproar. Laughs It's so easy, right? You wanna get some clicks? That's one way of doing it.”
When asked if he thinks the next Nickelback album will follow a heavier direction like “Feed The Machild,” he told WSOU, “I really hope it's heavier, just 'cause that's what makes my pulse go up. I don't know yet. It's not like we have the thing in the can — it's not all recorded — so we're still finding out what's gonna happen. We don't know yet. If I had to predict, I would say there's probably gonna be a wide-ranging body of work here.”
He continued, “There's gonna be the songs that people will wanna listen to when they're having a fun social event, and there's gonna be other songs when you wanna do the steering-wheel drums and bash away at something that's got a heavy metal kind of bent to it. I think we're gonna have everything across the board, really. I believe that's probably what's gonna happen. As much as I would just like to make cover-to-cover metal, there's probably gonna be songs for the people who like the more melodic love songs, and there's probably gonna be the heavy stuff too.”