By Jim Barber
Who doesn’t love a little learnin’ with their heavy metal? For fans of Swedish metal masters Sabaton, they’re being educated about some of the most significant events and people in history, all by simply cranking up one of the band’s albums. History has been at the forefront of the band’s lyrical creativity from the outset, and once they realized there was a receptive international audience wanting to hear epic tales about heroes, villains, battles, and epic adventures, Sabaton leaned in deeper and deeper into the mists of time with each successive release.
From their earliest days, Sabaton has invested a great deal of time and creative energy into building songscapes that are epic in scope, dynamic in presentation, filled with intense, intricate playing, voluminous, cinematic scenes with stories and characters that literally have stepped out of the pages of history.
On Legends, the band’s new album, coming out Oct. 17 through Better Noise Music the songs trace recorded human history going back nearly 4,000 years. There is a tome about the legendary and mysterious Knights Templar (‘Templars’), a powerful force in medieval European history as well as a key player during The Crusades. ‘Hordes of Khan’ is a rollicking adventure extolling the terrorizing dominance of Genghis Khan, while ‘Tiger Among Dragons’ tells the story of the near-mythical Chinese warrior Lu Bu, who lived and fought during the late Han Dynasty. Ancient Rome gets her due on the songs ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ which looks at the fateful and epoch shaping conquests of Julius Caesar, while ‘Lightning at the Gates’ takes the listener more than 150 years before the time of Caesar to when Rome was nearly toppled by the masterful Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca.
A ferocious egomaniacal ruler of a more modern time, Napoleon Bonaparte is the subject of ‘I, Emperor’ while his fellow countrywoman, Jeanne D’Arc (Joan of Arc) has her story of faith and tragedy told in ‘Maid of Steel.’ The dashing 16th century Japanese samurai swordsman Miyamoto Musashi is featured in ‘The Duelist,’ while the man for whom the character of Dracula was based, Vlad III, King of Wallachia, is immortalized in ‘Impaler.’ Ancient Egypt gets its turn with ‘The Cycle of Songs,’ about the 19th century B.C. Pharaoh Senruset III, an early version of the philosopher/warrior ruler. The final song on the album is ‘Till Seger,’ written and performed in the band’s native Swedish. It concerns the heroic 17th century Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus, who elevated Sweden’s stature within the European political and military scene, and was credited with doing much to help modernize the country.
Legends is Sabaton’s 11th studio album since 2005, and marks a shift in the creative process, according to Thobbe Englund, one of the band’s guitarists.
“The big change that was that all five of us wrote songs for the album. And the funny thing though is that for example, ‘Lightning at the Gates’ me and [vocalist] Joakim [Broden] wrote that song together, I think starting in 2022. And that was long before I knew that Tommy [Johannson] was going to leave and I was going to be coming back. So we actually finished that song in November of 2023. And we thought this was a great song maybe for the next album. But little did I know at the time that in two months, I was going to be back in the band [more about his exit and return later in the article],” he said of the collaborative nature of the band as they move through their 26th year.
“And we’re always trying to get better, and try new things and to evolve as musicians and songwriters. It’s always a good thing to stay curious and fill your life with things that make you happy and give you something to look forward to. And if you find something that drives you forward, it’s always a good thing. If it’s a hobby where you like to create something with your hands. It can be music, history, books, movies, whatever – learning is always good. It stimulates your brain and helps you live a longer life.”
He also talked about why he and his bandmates feel the concept of the album, a collection of songs that have some sort of connective tissue, is important, and why Sabaton still likes to create epic packaging and videos to match the magisterial nature of their songs.
“It comes back to when we were kids. We like to release some special vinyl or special editions of this and that and we know when we were kids how much that sort of thing meant to us. We treasured those things. I remember when Iron Maiden released their limited-edition stuff and all that and I just had to have it. It’s a special thing, and I think it’s a nice way to give something back to the fans who are always there to support us. And it’s important to have them and keep them. It’s almost like having a library with all sorts of great story books and history books,” Englund said, as he talked a little bit about his own personal musical influences.
“It was of course all the guys, you know, like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Yngwie Malmsteen as a guitar player and Gary Moore too, there was Manowar and later Guns N’ Roses, and Metallica of course. They had a huge impact on both my songwriting and of course guitar playing. I remember watching Yngwie Malmsteen, it was on some instructional video, an old VHS cassette that I borrowed from the library. I think I was 14 or something, and I put it on and was like, ‘what the hell?! This is what I’m going to do.’ So I skipped school, I skipped beer and girls and I was practicing guitar for eight, nine hours a day for like seven years or something. That’s how I started.”
Many bands have occasionally dabbled in songs about history moments and historic figures (Iron Maiden being one notable example), so why has it been such a significant part of Sabaton’s repertoire? A lot of it is simply the members of the band are fascinated with history and the important events and characters who contributed to the modern world in which we live. The band’s co-founders, and only remaining original members, lead vocalist Joakim Broden and bassist Par Sundstrom are the two main songwriters, although over the last few albums, newer band members Chris Rorland (guitar) Englund and drummer Hannes Van Dahl have become more involved. Rorland joined Sabaton in 2012, as did Englund, with Van Dahl coming on board the following year. Englund actually left the band in 2016, returning just last year.
“When I got into the band in 2012, they were already writing songs like this for years. But I heard the story of how it kind of started. They knew to go in this direction when they wrote the Primo Victoria album [the band’s debut, released in 2005.] It was Joakin who wrote the lyrics for the song ‘Primo Victoria’ [which is about the D-Day landings in 1944] and when they heard the demos to that song, both Joakin and Par, they kind of realized that this has a message, you know. It was something else, something stronger than just singing about riding your Harley, drinking beer and stuff like that – dragons and whatever. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But they wanted to do music that had a deeper meaning. And to my understanding, that’s where the guys realized, okay, this is the way to go. And since the time I was in the band, they always have history books; I see a bunch of books all the time in their bunks on the tour bus,” said Englund, from the band’s rehearsal room on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean, where Sundstrom has lived for a number of years.
“We’re not on a mission to teach the world or anything, but it’s a subject [history] that actually means something to everybody, I guess, because our history is why we’re here right now. And it’s an important thing, as I said earlier, it’s more important stuff to sing about because you don’t want to forget certain things that happened in the past, because we don’t want them to happen again. It’s pretty interesting stuff and I know people enjoy it, and that it has an impact on them. Before I left the band in 2016, I think we were in the U.S., so it must have been 2015 and we met up with this history professor after the show, and he told us that in class he actually played Sabaton songs for his students. Well, that’s pretty cool. And I totally get it. Because if you have like a big history book, you can’t really take everything in all at once. But if you have a song where you have like dates and names of people and names of cities and years and all that, it kind of sticks in your memory better. So, it’s kind of a good way of teaching and learning history. And if people are really interested, they can go research more into the people they heard about in the songs.”
With a seemingly endless supply of possible subjects to write about, Englund said it wasn’t easy paring down the list to the 11 songs included on Legends.
“There’s like, 30 legends that we started with. But the thing is we always write the music first. So once we had all the songs musically done, we then kind of sat down and figured out which legend would fit each song. So the song itself, the music, becomes a vehicle for that legend and their story. If you look at ‘Impaler,’ the music is very dark and haunting, and the story of Vlad the Impaler fits that, because it’s pretty dark too. And for that song, it was an immediate connection between the music and the subject,” he said.
“Some songs are more up-tempo so they fit different characters. ‘Crossing the Rubicon,’ the music for that had kind of a marching feel to it, so we felt it would fit Julius Caesar. And it’s interesting how the lyrics come together. Joakin and Par are the ones who usually write the lyrics. And I’ve seen them work together when it comes to lyric writing. And it’s like they sit down at a table, one guy is on one side and the other guy is on the other side and then they start to brainstorm and fit things together to the song. And usually by that time, they’ve done all their research, talked to experts and have all their notes and facts ready. They really do sometimes talk to professional historians and fact checkers to make sure the information they are putting in the songs in accurate.”
Englund believes that music, metal music in particular, is a great vehicle for not only learning about our past, but it’s also a great leveler, in unites people instead of separating them, it is inclusive, open, welcoming and a source of community for people around the world.
“Heavy metal is for everybody. It’s that feeling when you’re up there on stage and you can see everybody’s there for the same reason and everybody out there just loves heavy metal. And, you know, everybody is a friend of everybody. That’s a wonderful feeling. At heavy metal festivals, people gather there to drink beer and have fun, and there are no fights or drugs maybe like there might be with other kinds of music shows. It’s a place to forget about all the stuff going on in your life and all the bad stuff on the news for a few hours, and just let off some steam and sing and scream together, everybody in one place. It’s amazing,” he said.
As mentioned above, Englund left Sabaton in 2016 after four years of writing, recording and touring the world. It wasn’t because of the usual conflicts, band drama or the cliched ‘creative differences.’ It was because he wanted to have a family.
“In August of 2016 I left the band because I realized that I would like to start a family and slow down, because back then we toured insanely. I mean, we were always either at airports, hotel rooms or the tour bus when we weren’t onstage. It was super intense. And I remember lying there and I think we were on tour with Nightwish in the U.S. and Canada and I remember I couldn’t sleep at night and the tour bus was just rolling along and I was like, ‘why am I not happy?’ I was living this childhood dream of mine, playing heavy metal guitar in a heavy metal band with my best friends, drinking beer, having a good time, all the time, travelling the world. It was everything that I ever dreamt of. But I realized that there was one piece of the puzzle that’s missing and that was my son, who is turning seven soon,” he explained.
“So I left the band. And I remember later I was at Sabaton show, and I was standing there watching and the guy next to me said, ‘isn’t it weird to see the guys up there and you’re not in the band? Isn’t it weird to just watch the show and not be up there?’ And my gut reaction was, ‘what do you mean I’m not in the band. I’m just not on stage at the moment.’ That’s how I felt because we always stayed in touch all these years. These are my best friends and we always had the barbecues and family gatherings and stuff the whole time I was gone. So when Tommy decided to leave in late 2023, they asked me if I was interested in putting the camo pants back on. And I said, yeah, that’s definitely what I want to do. The timing was perfect. So now, I think my life is perfect. These days it’s easier to balance my family and the band. Sabaton has grown a lot from 2016 when I left and the touring schedule is not as intense anymore. The organization is bigger, everything is smoother and we do mostly bigger shows, which means more people and we don’t have to travel all the time to play in front of these people in smaller venues. We all have families now, so things are, like I said perfect.”
Sabaton is touring in support of Legends, with a busy schedule in Europe starting in November, before hopping the English Channel for dates in the U.K. starting early December, ending the jaunt with a big show in Stockholm on Dec. 13. The band then crosses the Atlantic Ocean for a pretty extensive run of shows across the United States in March and April. Canada is also going to get lots of love from Sabaton, as the band will have seven shows from coast to coasting beginning in Halifax on April 6, wrapping things up in North America in Vancouver on April 20. They then head back to Europe for the festival season in the summer of 2026.
“Canada is a place we love to play in. There is a lot of heavy metal people in Canada. It’s always so nice to get such a positive response from them. We love coming to Canada.
For those who may be curious, Englund’s son’s name is Loki, yes, that Loki. His full name is actually Thor Loki Englund, while his father’s name is Thor Bjorn Englund, with ‘Thobbe’ being a colloquial short form.
Information about Legends, touring plans and more can be found on the band’s socials or https://www.sabaton.net.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
