SABATON – Once More unto the Breach
Pictured: SABATON
Photo by: Christian Ripkens @christianripkens
Storming the trenches with the war metal legends.
Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Wednesday 02 March 2022
SABATON baritone Joakim Brodén might be at home sick in Norway, but you wouldn’t know it to talk to him. He calls bang on time, and soldiers on with a smile on his face. He would have been a great fit for the military, but as you’ll read, that wasn’t going to work out. Alas, the Swedish military’s loss is our gain, because the mighty SABATON are set to unleash their WWI epic The War to End All Wars on March 4th, a vivid and harrowing exploration of the bloody origins of the 20th century. Grab your rifle and get ready, because we’re going over the top …
The Interview
We do a segment called Now Hear This, where we get people to pick five pieces of art – music, movies or art – that they think people should check out. What would that be?
I would say, as a collective, Band of Brothers, [and] possibly The Pacific, made by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, even though Tom Hanks isn’t in it. Really amazing … best TV series, I think, ever done. It’s on HBO, and available in most places where there is streaming. Good music, real storytelling with the real soldiers who were there, spiced up just the right amount … Any TV series that is really like what it is to be in combat or be in the army is going to be a really boring TV series. [Laughs] I think [Band of Brothers] is on the right side of truth, at least.
An odd one: I would recommend anyone to randomly listen to a piece of music written by Johann Sebastian Bach, once a week, because there is always a surprise there. Sometimes you’ll be disappointed, but most times not. The output of that guy is crazy. So yeah, once a week, just randomise something by Bach. It might be twelve seconds, it might be twelve minutes. [Laughs]
BLACK SABBATH – Headless Cross or Tyr, back in the days with Tony Martin … I do like SABBATH with Ozzy, but there is so much more to SABBATH. They did some really great stuff together. On that note, also, the album Faceless World with U.D.O., Udo Dirkschneider from ACCEPT. He did a solo album in 1990 called Faceless World. Really underrated album – as good as the best stuff that ACCEPT did, if you ask me. Finally, check out our new album! [Laughs] The War to End All Wars, out March 4th!
You’ve told the story in interviews that you avoided military service because you found out where they were going to send you, and you didn’t want to be a coffee bitch to some officers, which, believe me, I can appreciate. You’ve obviously found enormous success as a musician, but is there a part of you that wishes, if you had your time again, that you’d gone the military route?
I don’t know. For me, it was mandatory military service, and what they asked me to do first was basically … a year-and-a-half, maybe a little bit less … I don’t know what rank it would be, but some sort of low-level officer on a canine patrol guarding a marine base. At least that was something that made sense to me, and I thought, “Yeah, why not?” We do have mandatory military service in Sweden, so I thought I’d do my part and see what comes of it. When they called me later I was waiting for surgery, and they told me I’d been reassigned … I asked some friends, and they said, “Uh-oh! No, no, no, no!” [Laughs] “You’ll be the one all the full-time officers are screaming at, and running their errands!”
Is this mandatory for every fit person in Sweden? Has this always been the case?
Yep. I mean, we had a gap just a few years ago and just reinstated it, because in the late 90s, early 2000s they removed the mandatory thing, and just two years ago they put it back in, but due to cutbacks and Sweden not being in conflict for so long, they basically cut it down, so the last couple of years, only people who wanted to do military service did … Most people would just have to not perform well on the test and sort of say “I’m not interested” and you’d get out of it! [Laughs] I mean, they don’t have money for everyone to join in, so it makes sense that, if you’re going to have somebody defending the country, let’s get the ones who actually want to do it! [Laughs]
I just had a mental image of Jens Kidman from MESHUGGAH as some sort of drill sergeant just screaming at people. [Laughs]
[Laughs] He’d be good at it! I mean, he’s a few years older than me, so he could actually have been … It’s most likely that he was in military service.
Obviously, SABATON’s music revolves around warfare and conflict and all these amazing stories. Have there been any battles or events in war that you’ve considered making a song about, but you’ve backed off, because you might have felt that it was inappropriate, or you couldn’t do it justice?
Yeah, for different reasons. For example, we wanted The Christmas Truce on The Great War, the previous album, but we didn’t have the right music to do the story justice. I think it’s one of the greatest stories in military history, and we didn’t have the music for it, so we chose not to. Other than that, we decided not to do things based on the fact that it’s almost current events, so what we know at the time, or the information that we were able to get, were news reports, and also, I guess, propaganda from the government, which is always a risk. So we decided, these days, to only look into things [so far back] that serious historians without a skin in the game have looked into it. But [has there been] a topic that [was] like “No, we cannot do that – it’s too controversial”? No. I mean, we did the Six Day War in Israel. We did how Hitler came to power in Rise of Evil. It’s a double-edged sword. Sometimes we do get a bit of extra attention when we sing about a certain country, but on the other hand, sometimes we get people really angry because they misunderstand it. [Laughs] Traditionally, a lot of music has been used to move a political or a religious message, even way back [with] religious music, and then since I guess the sixties [with] political messages, and a lot of artists are doing that. Nothing wrong with that, but we have chosen not to, but people automatically assume that because it’s music, and we’re singing about something, that there’s a message there. On the movies side of thing, it’s more common. “Hey, I’m just telling a story.” That’s pretty much what we do. Nobody would ask Steven Spielberg if he was a Nazi just because he made the movie Schindler’s List.
I’ve been watching some footage of your amazing live shows, and I’ve got to ask – if money, safety or sanity was not a concern, what would you like to incorporate in your live shows? Aerial dogfights? Some artillery? A tank battle?
We have considered a few of them, actually. At a festival, we had flybys and a simulated dogfight just before we entered the stage, so we have tried that. The big dream, I guess, would be a battlefield tour in Europe or anywhere. It’s more easily doable in Europe considering the density of the battlefields. [Laughs] Playing Normandy beaches on the sixth of June, having the stage where the German bunkers and positions were, and having the crowd come in from the beaches.
Oh nice …
Then line up safety barriers where the crowd could get up, and on the outside, there’s pyro blowing up. So they can get to storm Normandy beach!
Who, for your money, put on some of the best live shows in the world, and why?
One band that I think constantly puts on something unexpected, and is always worth seeing, is RAMMSTEIN. From a production standpoint, that is one of the coolest shows to see. If you were a bit more “I don’t care about the effects”, then I guess IRON MAIDEN are still doing fucking fantastic, and JUDAS PRIEST to a certain extent as well.
What can people expect from The Tour to End All Tours? Or are you not giving anything away?
Well, that depends on the venue, in a sense, and the country we’re going to. We have expanded on our previous tour, so it’s got even more elements and it’s larger, seeing as we’re still in the same conflict, which is also a conscious choice. We didn’t want to make another album, let’s say, about something totally different, like the Napoleonic era. That would make songs like Seven Pillars of Wisdom or anything from The Great War feel sort of irrelevant or out of place. For example, we didn’t get to go to Australia on The Great Tour because of the pandemic, so we decided to incorporate and make a whole World War One experience, and focus a lot on that. Of course, we’re going to play other songs as well, but the main focus will be World War One, for sure.
The War to End All Wars is out March 4th.
SABATON L-R: Pär Sundström, Hannes Van Dahl, Joakim Brodén, Tommy Johansson + Chris Rörland
Photo by: Tim Tronckoe @timtronckoe