5 D-Bag Rock Bands That Make Our Ears Bleed

Sorry, Nickelback, but douches are for vaginas, not rock ‘n’ roll.

Grunge was grimy, but it wasn’t until the ’90s rebel music died down that rock lovers were really done dirty. After awesome bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains told money-hungry suits to go fuck themselves, a new generation of radio-friendly bands that only appeared to be rough around the edges completely douched-out a new formula for post-grunge arena rock. Sadly, some of these lames are still with us all these years later.

Imagine our horror when we saw that Nickelback (no, can I get the whole $14.99 back?) just released a new album, Dark Horse. Nice title meant to evoke badassness, but they’re still tools, and they inspired Complex, shuddering with disgust, to call out the five douchiest post-grunge arena rock bands…


THREE DOORS DOWN
• Douche Details: This Mississippi-based group is on some quasi-religious militia-lovin’ southern rock shit and has debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 with its last two albums. We’ve never really understood the appeal, but then we hear car racing is pretty big in this country too.
• Douchiest Moment: When they turned the music video for their National Guard tribute song “Citizen/Soldier” into a recruitment commercial.

GOO GOO DOLLS
• Douche Details: This trio from upstate New York polished up their sound when they achieved commercial success on their fifth album, A Boy Named Goo (you-are-what-you-eat pause), and then went on to blow the fuck up with “Iris,” a soft-ass song for the Nicholas Cage tearjerker City of Angels. Every time you listen, an angel loses its wings.
• Douchiest Moment: It’s either when the band changed its name from Sex Maggots to Goo Goo Dolls to assuage a club owner or when frontman Johnny Rzeznik went to the hair stylist and said, “Frost me and make me look like a tussled lesbian.”

CREED
• Douche Details: These Floridians made faith-based rock like “With Arms Wide Open” and “Higher” that was gobbled up by Christian radio, then they denied that their music was Christian rock. That stance, along with their crappy music, should earn them eternal fiery damnation.
• Douchiest Moment: When frontman Scott Stapp compared Creed to U2? When fans sued Stapp for being too hammered to sing his lyrics properly? When Stapp feuded with Fred Durst, 311 and Dave Grohl? Hard to say, but their least douchiest moment was definitely when they broke up in 2004. If only Scott Stapp hadn’t decided to go solo, we’d be in the clear by now.

DAUGHTRY
• Douche Details: One of four American Idol finalists in the show’s fifth season, Chris Daughtry (far left) flipped his popularity into one of the best-selling rock albums of 2006, proving that Idol’s rock douches could move just as many units as its Clay Aiken pop douches.
• Douchiest Moment: When Daughtry made his rock dreams come true by participating on American Idol. Bang your head! (Against a wall.)

NICKELBACK
• Douche Details: This Canadian band of tools has proved that you can fool pre-teens by making the same song over and over again with the same tough power chords, provided it sucks horribly and you growl-sing it with unbelievably bad rock styling. Canada has always been good for a laugh.
• Douchiest Moment: The extended douche-y moment really started the moment bassist Mike Kroeger thought that giving change to customers at Starbucks (”Here’s your nickel back!”) was an awesome band name. And here is your Grande Douche!