I hate Nickelback, but I figure I ought to make peace with them, because history tells us that like most multi-platinum hard-rock acts, one day my kids are going to sing along to their songs in the car. So before we start hearing “Never Gonna Be Alone” at weddings, what’s good about Dark Horse? Well, as cigarettes are to nicotine, so Nickelback are to cheesy melodies: a crude but incredibly efficient delivery system. Every spare moment of Dark Horse is filled with catchy hooks, whether they’re in country-metal mode (“Something In Your Mouth,” which despite all the chug-a-lugging riffage actually features a brief hoe-down) or inspirational naptime poem (“If Today Was Your Last Day”). But their meathead philosophy — the bro-ing down, the violent binge drinking, the Madonna/whore complex — is still scary, because unlike ’50s greasers or ’90s gangsta rappers, we all have a cousin or a high-school friend who basically is Chad Kroeger, a borderline-dangerous neanderthal whose ultimate fantasy is a stripper with a heart of gold who wouldn’t mind bailing him out of the drunk tank. Only time can replace him with another brand of lunkhead (you wouldn’t really want to hang out with the Judas Priest fans in Heavy Metal Parking Lot, either). In the meantime, I’ll be lunging for my radio dial every time they come on.