It turns out that, if you throw a cup of beer hard and confidently enough at a crowd, a surprising amount of it stays in the cup. As Nickelback's guitarist Ryan Peake adjourned to throw a dozen or so vessels into the throng, you wondered if someone had ever devised a mathematical formula to explain why this might be. If they have, it will almost certainly be more complicated than the musical formula that has propelled the Canadian quartet into the affections of such a huge fanbase.

If that sounds like a criticism, it isn't meant to. You suspect that, at their inception - 12 years before scoring their biggest hit with this year's Rockstar - the group's frontman, Chad Kroeger, erased any esoteric pretensions from his thoughts. From the moment grunge went overground, it was a certainty that a band such as Nickelback would take elements of that genre - raspy vocals, volcanic power chords, straggly hair - and fuse them to a classic heavy-rock sound.

They've been doing it with ease for some time now. You feared for anyone who had a heart condition as a series of explosions heralded the breakneck riffing that hurtled throughout the opening song, Animals, and into Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright (for Fighting). “Birmingham!” roared the leonine Kroeger. “I wanna see your devil hands in the f***ing air!” Who knows how gamely other cities had responded to the same request, but in the spiritual capital of heavy metal no shortage of pink-faced, middle-aged Sabbath veterans obliged.

Had this been, say, a Metallica show, you suspect that many of them would have left home without their spouses. But what distinguishes Nickelback is their gift for servicing the musical needs of both sexes. “Here's one for the ladies,” said Kroeger, as he introduced Far Away. Translated into English from rockspeak, he meant: “Traditionally, women respond warmly to anthemic, mid-paced, emotionally vulnerable numbers with transparently autobiographical content, such as this one, about missing your old school chums.”

Underscoring Kroeger's status as a generation's rock dreamboat of choice was a heartfelt detonation of How You Remind Me - the group's maiden hit from 2001. From where Kroeger stood, he would have seen hundreds of adoring faces illuminated by the phones that they were using to film him.

Had he not already written Rockstar - a mildly sarcastic song about the accoutrements of celebrity - you might for a second have pondered that it would be rather nice to share his vantage point. As it was, Nickelback performed that very song as an encore - and 11,000 people who would swap with him at the drop of a hat bellowed out every syllable with him.

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