Nickelback have been in the music news headlines for all the wrong reasons recently, with The Black Keys' Patrick Carney telling Rolling Stone magazine that "...rock & roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world", and worse.

Any band that conquers the mainstream will inevitably become a relatively easy target for anyone wishing to have a pop. There can be no problem with Carney enjoying his own view and sharing it but the clever thing to do would be to make his point without resorting to clichéd soft targets.

The fact is, Nickelback are enormously successful; shifting around 45 million albums, picking up five Grammy-nominations, collecting 12 Canadian Juno awards and being named 'Group of the Decade' by Billboard magazine in 2009. And this decade isn't going too badly either.

The band's first new material in three years, 2011's Here and Now, was another huge hit, topping the charts in Canada, reaching No 2 in the US and breaking the Top Ten here. In America, it sold a quarter-of-a-million copies in its first week. The Black what-now?

The Canadian stadium rock kings are bringing the new record and a back catalogue which includes megahits like How You Remind Me and Rockstar to the UK in October with a series of five dates in a week, beginning at The O2 on Monday 1st October, followed by Birmingham (NIA), the Manchester Arena and then Newcastle, before the final show in Sheffield on the 7th.

We will have tickets available from 9am on Friday 30th March, priced from around £35.