Sabaton
In The Army Now

13.06.2014

“Oh, Mother Russia, union of lands / Once more victorious, the Red Army stands” – can you imagine that these are the lyrics taken from a Swedish band’s song? And what if I tell you that this very band was accused of being neo-nazi and had their show in Volgograd cancelled because of that? Doesn’t it sound like total crap? And still it’s true. Sure, I’m talking about Sabaton, and military history is what almost all their songs are all about. After 7 years since their first album “Primo Victoria” was released the Swedes have at their disposal a huge arsenal (yep, the most fitting word!) of songs dedicated to almost every military conflict in the human history. Their topics wander from The Battle of Poltava to Operation Overlord in Normandy and from Vietnam to Iraq. Shortly before their new album, “Heroes”, was released, we contacted the band’s bassist Pär Sundström to find out how it is possible that the same band is called both nazis and commies, where the ideas for the lyrics come from and what made the musicians play a whole show riding bicycles.

How is it going with your new album?

It is absolutely great; we are now on a promotional tour across Europe. Today I’m mostly on the phone but I’ve already visited some counties, talked to a lot of people and we have played the new album for journalists and for friends of us; and people are very excited so now I can be relaxed. You know, when you  make an album, you’re a little bit nervous about what’s gonna happen, if people are gonna like it or not, but now I’m very relaxed. Yesterday another trailer got out and became available for people to listen to and I’m so happy to see the reaction of the fans as well. So right now I’m just, you know, flying around and being happy.

Are you personally content with the result?

Yeah, absolutely. In all kind of ways. We had a lot of pressure before making the album; partly because we had a very strong album before which was “Carolus Rex” (2012), it gave us great success and brought Sabaton to a new level. But also because we had a change, we have several new band members, which of course put a lot of pressure on us. If we had failed with this album and not made it so good a lot of people would have thought that it was the change of the band members that caused it or something like that. And people would have said, “Oh, it was better before” or something. Now I’m sure they cannot say this. Of course there will be somebody who will still complain, but I think in general nobody can think that this is anything else but a great successful album.

Joakim (Brodén, vocalist – ed.) said that you had to throw away half of the songs in November. Is it true?

A lot of ideas were thrown away. Partly because we had this high pressure, we were very nervous and it made us re-think everything like, “OK, we cannot put it on the album just because it’s good. It needs to be great”. Also we needed some diversity on the album, we needed to think, “OK, this is a good song but it reminds of that one”. We wanted to create such a fresh feeling on the album that when you turn it on, you are, like, “Oh, this is a great song”. And when you hear the next song you’ll hear something different and it will be like the album is restarting, for every song will have such a unique identity. I’m very, very happy for that.

Can you tell us a bit about the recording process? Did you take part in the songwriting?

Me personally, I usually don’t take part in the songwriting. It is mainly Joakim who writes the music, though sometimes he does it together with other people. I’m writing the lyrics and I do a lot of other stuff for the band. But I’m always there to push Joakim to write better songs (both laughing) or I make some other input like, “Maybe this is not good enough, you need to re-think this”. But he is the main songwriter and when he comes with the ideas for the songs I collect the topics, the lyrical things and finally we sit down together and write the lyrics. We usually show up in the studio with a pretty much clear idea of what we want the album to be like. Then the producer can only, add some thoughts and make it better, but we have already a pretty good idea when we come to the studio, because we did the demos before and a lot of pre-production things as well.

Are you still looking for a keyboard player?

We are not searching actively for a keyboard player because we do have a keyboard player. Joakim was always writing using the keyboards in the past, and he was also playing a lot of keyboards in the past in Sabaton, so… We have realized that when we play live and have the keyboards pre-recorded, Sabaton songs feel really good. It also helps to take away the limits you have when there is a person that has to play all the keyboards, because some songs even require more than one keyboard, and sometimes we’d have to have three keyboards to be able to do a song justice, and having a keyboardist wouldn’t really work with that. If we found an absolutely right guy, then… Then maybe. But it doesn’t matter if it is a good keyboard player, just a good musician. We are looking for something much more. We are kind of looking, but we are not really. We are fine.

Where do you get the ideas for all these lyrics?

A lot of them were sent in by fans actually. For the years fans have sent us different ideas and some of them are, like, just an idea; some of them are much more, they provide more information, the whole story or something. Maybe some material where we can do research and stuff. Because when we sit home in Sweden we cannot know what the whole world has to offer, what we can sing about. So when we get the ideas from the fans, we get the information from all the corners of the world and… we can find some really interesting things sometimes. I think more than half of the new album is inspired by the fans.

Where does the whole interest for the military history come from? I mean, Sweden hasn’t fought any war for quite a while…

That is true. But me and Joakim have had this interest for a long time. In 2005 we were sitting down and, like, “OK, we need some lyrics for an album here”. And we both said that we wanted to write about something that was from the real world. We didn’t want to write songs about fictional stories; we wanted to think about something that was real. And this historical theme was something we both were interested in. So we found out, like, “OK, it’s fun for us to write lyrics like this, to do the research” and now we have found a kind of identity within it. Our fans can go deeper into the songs and I really like it. I think that lyrics are also a part of a song; it’s not only about music. If we can tell a story, there are more exciting stories in the real world than there are in fictional worlds.

But don’t you feel somehow bounded by this topic? You kind of have to write songs about wars because that is what the fans expect from you now.

No, I don’t see it the way that we have to do it. We can do other things if we want to. I mean, there are several topics that I don’t think Sabaton ever would touch. Like fantasy or something like that because there is nothing interesting for us there. But if we find another topic which we are like, “OK, that interests us”, then Sabaton is not limited to do only historical things.

You know, wars are a very controversial topic. Do any misunderstandings occur concerning your lyrics?

Of course. Sometimes there are two versions of a story. And usually it is the victorious side who writes the official version. Sure, sometimes Sabaton gets misunderstood. We do. But we are encouraging people not to see us as a political band trying to change the world and make people think differently or something. We are writing from all kinds of sides, but we never put our own thoughts into it. We do not want people to think that the band is trying to do some kind of statements or something. We are here for the fans.

Do you somehow choose which songs to play in different countries? For example, different songs for Russia and Germany or something.

Well, there are some which are more popular in some territory.  I mean, we are not stupid and this regards to our fans. They are after all the most important thing in this case. If they wanna hear a song, we do not possess the ego thinking of denying the fans what they want. So usually we play mainly the most popular songs for that territory. We are very varying, some bands stick to the same setlist around the world, but we change around a lot. On the last tour we had almost 30 songs in the setlist. And we would play maybe 15 every night. You can see that we change around a lot. Today with the Internet and stuff you can do a lot of simple research - what kind of songs are the most popular in one country. And then we can use that as the base or the main part of the songs and then throw in a few unexpected songs or something. But in general we listen a lot to our fans, what they wanna hear is more important that what we wanna play. ‘Cause we wanna play all the songs. As long as the fans are having fun it makes no sense for us to play a song because, “Ah, we wanna play this song because it’s fun to play”, and then the crowd hates it. We don’t have this ego. It doesn’t make any sense.

Last year you were supposed to play a show in Volgograd, but it never happened. Can you tell us the whole story?

There was one local politician who had the impression that Sabaton was a neo-Nazi band. He did what he could to stop the show and he succeeded in stopping it. That was very sad because I thought that it would be… I mean Sabaton sings a lot about history and that event would have been very nice to play. So I was personally very sad for that. I went there myself, not with the band, but I went there myself to meet the media and talk to people if there would be anybody still wondering in this case. Because I felt it was very important to let people hear our side, our point of view on that. Sabaton doesn’t want to take a political stand, and it’s very sad when some people without knowing better call us something. It hurts us.

It’s a shame because I really think it would be great to see you playing there.

Yeah. And it was a great event, since I was there. It was very exciting to see, a very nice stage and a lot of people, and the atmosphere was really great.

Are you often called Nazis or Commies or whatever?

Not often. In the beginning it happened more often but since then we have done a lot of interviews and we have done a lot of statements and we have more fans who talk for us. We are getting less and less misunderstood, which I’m very happy for. And that is thanks to a lot of fans. They stand up for us and when somebody says, “Oh, Sabaton is this or that” they are like, “No. We know better. Our band, Sabaton, is not a political band”. And I’m very happy for those fans. Over the years we have had so many dedicated fans and they help us a lot. They talk to concert promoters, like, “You should book Sabaton because they are a very nice band” and when enough people do that we have the possibility to come to a certain place and play a show.

Don’t you think it would be easier for you to sing about something that happened maybe 200 or 300 years ago? Those topics are safer.

That’s what we did with our last album, “Carolus Rex”, it is about Swedish history. It was more difficult because it’s not as well documented as World War Two is. So we needed some help from a history professor for that. But it was exciting to write about and if we want to write something like that, we can do it, but then we base it more on myths and legends and not so much on facts. And we love facts. (laughs) I mean we both, Joakim and me, the lyric writers, prefer to hold on to what is real.

Have you ever visited any of the places you are singing about?

Yeah, I was in Volgograd or Stalingrad. I was very excited, I really enjoyed my day there. I wish I could one day bring the whole band there. Also we have been around in Belgium and the Netherlands where a lot of things we sing about occurred. And we have obviously been in Poland. We were able to play a concert on the battlefield where the events for the song “40 to 1” take place. That was a really, really powerful thing to do. I’ve been also to Gallipoli… Sometimes when we are touring and we have a little bit of time we try to see those places we sing about. A few of them I listed and I’d love to go and see more.

You know, nowadays a lot of bands complain that the market is going down and everything, they sell less CDs every year. And Sabaton seems to grow bigger and bigger. How do you do that?

We tour quite a lot. We try to find new fans. Too many bands think that they are, for example, too big to support other bands. We think that this is absolutely great. The key to the success of some of the biggest bands in the history is that they have generations of fans. They have a lot of young people, a lot of old people and a lot of middle-aged people. This is my wish, too. I want to find as many people as possible to get into the band. Too many people are focusing on earning money and they have their egos, and I’m glad that Sabaton doesn’t have that big ego. We are humble and we are very well aware of what we are doing. Also we have our own management and it has been like this since the beginning, we know what’s going on around us. I know many bands that have no clue about it, like, “Ok, so? We just did a tour and… What happened? Did the fans like it or whatever?” We are involved in everything, we read what fans say and we talk to fans. In that sense we are much more aware of what’s going on around us than a lot of other bands are. That helps.

Talking about supporting other bands, last year you were touring with Iron Maiden. How did it go?

The tour with Iron Maiden was absolutely great. I mean, we’re all big fans of Iron Maiden, and they have been a big source of inspiration to me. And they still are, which I’m very happy for. I’m glad to see that people, rock musicians who take care of themselves and don’t go drinking and do drugs, stay in good condition and can deliver so well at an age which I want to reach being in the same condition as they are. There are so many bands that just do drugs, and they are drunk, and they are wasting their own lives… A lot of people before the tour were saying that maybe it wouldn’t work because Iron Maiden fans are so picky and maybe they wouldn’t like us… But it worked absolutely great and I think that’s because Sabaton is a very genuine band. You can see that we are not there having a boring time. We‘re having fun on stage and I think ultimately that’s what most people want to see.

I know you are taking care of yourself, too. I saw this cycling clinic recently…

Yeah, the gym show.

It was fun.

Absolutely. And it was a message we wanted to send out to all the fans. It is something like this: I know that some fans think it’s cool that rock musicians drink and that they do drugs, and they are cool and they crash hotel rooms and stuff but I think in the end of the day most people would rather see a band with a lot of energy on stage, healthy, not chewing up any tangle of words and instead of that… I mean, I want to be in a band that goes on stage every night with a lot of energy and gives the fans a good show. This is our promise and this is why we did this show and this is why we go a lot to gyms and do a lot of running and try to keep fit. We want the fans to have the best shows possible.

As you said, you are touring very extensively. Is it difficult for you to keep the passion alive when you are doing, like, 200 shows per year?

For me, no. I’m so happy and I hear a lot of bands that complain, “Oh, touring is so boring. Of course, the shows are great, but all the travelling is so boring…” I hate to hear that and I think that they are spoiled stupid people who don’t deserve to be in the music business. Because there are so many people that I know who work hard for something else and they would love to have the possibility to wait in an airport and just enjoy listening to music or dreaming or talking to their friends or something. They’re in it for the wrong reason and they apparently don’t understand what this all is about. They complain like, “Oh, we had to wait for five hours in the airport. So boring…” If they complain about that I think they have a very downward going career and they will not last long. In five hours I can sit and drink and think about things and I can read a book or listen to my favourite music. It’s a blessing, nothing else.

You always use a lot of pyrotechnics and everything for you shows. Have you ever had any troubles with it?

No, not with pyrotechnics. Never any troubles. I’m not a pyrotechnician myself, I don’t do the pyros for Sabaton for many years, and we have some hired companies now because it’s so much work with the licenses and stuff in different countries. I’ve only the license for doing it in Sweden but I don’t do it anymore, it takes a lot of work. But I think it’s fun. And if you have a professional pyros, it should be safe.

You know, I really love your songs dedicated to heavy metal itself. Like “Metal Crue” or “Metal Machine”. Will you ever have other songs like that?

Yes, we have done a song called “Man of War” for the new album. (laughs) It’s one of those songs and the lyrics are all about Manowar titles.

Why Manowar?

Well, simply because when Joakim and our drummer Hannes (van Dahl, - ed.) wrote the song, it sounded a lot like Manowar. So they thought, like, “OK, it would be strange to put this song on the album so let’s do it as a bonus song and let’s do it… more as a tribute song, like this”.

Great, I definitely have to purchase the bonus track version on the album. Thank you. Do you want to add something for the fans?

I want to tell all the fans in Russia that we came with Scorpions and then we came with Iron Maiden and I think that now we are planning to come on our own to give a full Sabaton show. And I cannot wait for that.

Hopefully, no politics will interfere this time.

Yeah, I hope for that, too.

Sabaton on the Internet: http://www.sabaton.net

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Ekaterina Akopova
March 22, 2014
© HeadBanger.ru