The experiment is now taking place under a blood moon.

It’s just after 4 a.m. and I’m sitting in my backyard, wearing headphones. A skunk has just scurried past. This should be alarming. But at this ungodly hour, with my view of the lunar eclipse blocked by clouds, I’m not worried about a small mammal that may spray me with foul liquid.

I’m distracted by four other mammals: Nickelback.

Let’s back up 12 hours.

A man in the United Kingdom launched an odd campaign this week. If you donate $50 to Craig Mandell’s Tilt crusade, he vows to email Nickelback and encourage them to never perform in London.

How this stunt might work, I have no idea. My guess is Nickelback probably already runs an offshore sweatshop jammed with workers who do nothing but delete cease-and-desist emails from outraged music lovers.

The loathing, however, is familiar.

Sometimes, when I’m hovering in line at an ATM, I’ll blurt out, “God, I hate Nickelback.” Instead of slowly backing away — as people usually do when someone talks to himself in public — strangers will come closer and whisper, “Me too. I hate Nickelback.”

Hating them brings us together.

But is this fair? As I fished my Visa from my wallet and got ready to donate to the crowdfunding scheme, I felt a twinge of guilt. How can I hate something I don’t understand? I can’t name three Nickelback songs and can barely hum the chorus to the one that goes “too late, so wrong, so long, let’s walk, let’s talk.”

Thumbing my Visa, I had a change of heart. I clicked into the iTunes store and did something not on any bucket list: I bought a Nickelback album.

Then I bought all of them.

The experiment: I would listen to this studio catalogue on repeat for 24 hours — in the shower, around the breakfast table, in my car, at the office, running errands, reading bedtime stories to the kids, trying to glimpse the blood moon. Nickelback’s seven albums and 78 songs, a five-hour block of sonic mystery, would be the soundtrack to my life.

The goal was to stop hating. And the experiment started with great promise.

The first track on the band’s 1996 full-length debut, Curb, rumbled to life with strong guitar licks and a solid backbeat. This isn’t so bad, I thought, struck with an inexplicable urge to vandalize school property in a Jack Daniels T-shirt.

But somewhere between “Pusher” and “Window Shopper,” a sinking feeling infiltrated my Beats headphones. I was trying to listen with open ears, to appreciate why the Canadian rockers have sold more than 50 million albums and played sold-out arenas around the world.

I wanted to discover a musical genius hidden by my own blind hatred: “Nickelback does not actually suck, the Star has learned.”

Instead, I discovered these guys are even worse than imagined.

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No matter the song, no matter where I was, lead singer Chad Kroeger sounded like he was locked in an echo chamber and in great pain, as if trying to pass a kidney stone while invisible tormenters snapped mousetraps to his dangly parts.

In traffic on the Danforth, I rolled down the windows and cranked up “Another Hole in the Head.” Cyclists slowed to glower. Pedestrians stopped and scowled with open disgust, as if I was standing in the middle of the street and pouring radioactive waste down the front of my trousers.

Have you ever tried to read a book from the Pinkalicious series while listening to songs like “Bottoms Up” or “Side of a Bullet”? It’s like trying to ride a unicycle while getting dive-bombed by pelicans.

At the grocery store, I tried to inspect pears for ripeness but the song “Animals” kept triggering spasms. My hands shook. My ears ached. While passing the bakery, I almost crashed my cart into a table of strudel at the start of “Next Contestant.”

It was as if Lucifer himself was berating me in a mumbly baritone.

And what is up with these juvenile lyrics? There are more double-entendres and ridiculous come-ons than on R. Kelly’s entire home video collection. “I want you naked with your favourite heels on. / Slap John Deere across my ass and ride me up and down the lawn” is a sample verse from “Next Go Round” and the kind of sentiment you’d be wise not to jot down in your spouse’s next birthday card.

Then there were the behavioural changes. After about two hours of Nickelback, I started breathing through my mouth. At four hours, I felt paranoid, like a nearby stapler was about to come alive and staple my eyes shut.

I bumped into a friend outside Shoppers Drug Mart about eight hours into the experiment. He extended his hand. Instead of shaking it, I simply held up my pinkie and index finger and growled with my tongue wagging out, like a Labrador retriever in the back of an SUV.

I also started shouting. At one point, an environmental canvasser knocked on the door just as “One Last Run” ended. I stopped her mid-spiel and said, “WE ALREADY DONATE TO MANY CHARITIES! TOO LATE, SO LONG, ROCK ON!”

I’m reminded of something a piano teacher told me many moons ago. In a great musical performance, the instruments sound like they are talking to one another at a dinner party. I suspect this might be the problem. Nickelback’s instruments sound like they are trading punches in a bar brawl.

Music is subjective. And while I wouldn’t subject my worst enemy to “Hangnail” or “Midnight Queen,” at least I can now be objective when I say, “God, I hate Nickelback.”

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