Music and History: Sabaton

When you look at various metal bands you find that they have some kind of theme or style. Ghost is all about a fictional church, Powerwolf has wolves, unsurprisingly. Sabaton has the history of warfare, heroic acts, people and stories within. That’s a pretty big thing to have as a gimmick of sorts but let me explain.

Their latest album, “The War To End All Wars” is based around the first World War. They touch on topics such as blitzkrieg and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which is considered to be in the inciting incident. Which makes it fitting to be the theme of the opening track “Sarajevo”. In fact in doing some reading for this article the wikipedia page for the album has a list of the themes with further reading, which is great!

I am learning so much!

This commitment to history makes for some very interesting albums. When I was first looking to buy their albums on CD, some of them were listed as “history edition”. This is the album as normal but each track is prefaced by a narrator who gives a talk about the theme for that track. I have listened to “The Great War” with this and it makes the album feel very theatrical, almost like a heavy metal musical.

Again, doing the reading for this article has also introduced me to their YouTube channel Sabaton History where they cover these topics like mini documentaries. A recent release covers a topic from their latest album, the Harlem “Hellfighters“. I’m looking forward to go through their back catalogue of videos and songs.

Glad to see the orchestra is back!

Much like Powerwolf, they have also released an orchestral version of their latest album which has been a great listen. In looking into their back catalogue they have done this a couple of times now and I hope it is a trend to continue.

Again this is a heavy metal band (a Swedish one at that) so of course their album art goes hard! In fact they change the art depending on the release. I have yet to find a single one that isn’t just incredible.

Another one for the collection

As far as their music goes, I love it! The vocals are again good and clear, although some of the names can be a bit hard to parse (Osowiec in mentioned in the song “Attack of the dead men” as an example). In the bands defence I am sure their German is better than mine!

The tone of some of the tracks can jump wildly. A good example of this is the two tracks “Attack of the dead men” and “Devil Dogs” which are back to back on the album “The Great War”. The first is very heavy metal song with a almost marching song pace and the second shift gears into an upbeat mode like a recruitment song. It was rather jarring at first but I have come to enjoy it as I feel like the album is more like a collection of short stories rather than one longer story.

I have enjoyed what I have heard so far and I am slowly making my way through their back catalogue. They are the first band that has made want to read up on history to get a better appreciation for their music!