On March 4th, 2022, Sabaton will release their latest album, ‘The War To End All Wars’ via Nuclear Blast Records. The album is a follow-up to the previous release, ‘The Great War’, and will feature 11 brand-new tracks talking about the tragedies and miracles that happened during World War I. I caught up with vocalist Joakim Brodén to hear more about the process of making the album, what we can expect from the album, and when and where they will be touring in support of the release
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Thanks for speaking with me, Joakim. How are you and the guys doing?
Pretty good actually, though some of us are a bit sick. That’s to be expected in these times! But in general, we’re good.
I know that things are opening back up in Sweden, but how are things where you are in Norway in terms of the virus situation?
It’s pretty much open as well. Different locations have different rules, and I just carry a mask and do what everyone else does and wear one inside, but everything else has pretty much been removed. I think Denmark was the first country to say, you know what, no more restrictions.
It has to get quite confusing over there with all the countries, as I’m sure they all have their own restrictions.
It is. And that’s actually one of the things I loved about being in the U.S. in September and October. Different states, of course, have their own rules, but it was only just one centralized government to deal with. Doing a European tour at the moment would be impossible with all the quarantine rules, getting in and out of countries with testing. It would be a logistical nightmare to try and do a European tour. We did have one planned, and we were supposed to start on March 4th. But we do get to start the Swedish tour on the 7th of April.
If I remember correctly, just before everything shut down, you guys were literally one of the last bands of the world touring.
(laughing) Yeah! Russia was a little bit later on the lockdowns than the rest of the world. It was weird because the final week and a half, the news had already started spreading, and we hadn’t gone far into Russia before we started seeing reports of cases. But for the last week, we just saw country after country shutting down totally, and we’re still touring in Russia.
We we’re wondering how much of the data can be trusted because in the beginning, we weren’t in any huge centers. Because if you’re in central Russia, chances are you’re not traveling to Moscow, Berlin, Germany on a daily basis. So it was a little bit slower, but Moscow and St. Petersburg started shutting down only one day after we had been there. And we were getting ready for a show and on the show day in the afternoon, I think, we got the call that no, it’s a lockdown here as well.
I know it’s been quite tricky, especially for bands such as Sabaton who tour quite extensively. And then when you are over here in the states with Judas Priest, and sadly Richie had a health issue with the rest of that tour had to be discontinued.
Yeah, and we weren’t even over halfway into that tour. It was heartbreaking in so many ways because Richie is such a nice guy, and at the time, we didn’t even know if he was going to make a full recovery. But also we had some trouble getting back on track because when we came to the U.S. we had some trouble getting visas, though that wasn’t because of us being suspicious!
And I’m not blaming anyone here, but it was just with the American Embassy in Sweden not allowing interviews to be done face-to-face. Even though we had this in NIE, a national interest exemption or whatever, we couldn’t get an actual visa. All we had to do was go and show ourselves and be like, hello, and answer some questions.
It’s really not a big thing, but we had a go Belfast just two or three days before the tour started. We had some crew living over in Belfast, but they were saying they’ll take the next time, and when we came over, we had an engineer from the US, and we had our guitar tech and a physiotherapist who acted as a tour manager as well. So that was our crew!
It’d been a while since we toured, we’re like, okay, everyone is getting settled in, we started doing the shows changing the setlist, and as soon as we started having great shows and everything was going well, that happened.
And with everything else that’s gone on with the pandemic, I’m assuming the new album ‘The War To End All Wars’, is a product of the pandemic?
Yes, it is; otherwise, we would’ve been on tour for ‘The Great War’ mid to late 2021. And I guess we would’ve been in songwriting mode now and recording. So yeah, this album wouldn’t have happened. And I don’t think it would’ve been about World War I either. Because there were certain stories we left behind, like Hellfighters and Christmas Truce. We wanted to do them for “The Great War,” but we didn’t have the right music for those songs, so we decided to leave them for a later time.
Though we didn’t know when and where we were going to do them, then with the tour announcement, we had so many people sending us things being like, hey did you see this? And then there were quite a few instances in which we are like, how the hell did we not know about this?
That and in combination with not being able to finish the great war tour, and then coming to territories we haven’t played on the great war, and then having to play songs from the great war. And if we would’ve had a new album out about say, the Napoleonic era, that might’ve made the great war songs feel irrelevant. So we decided to just roll with it as we were still in the World War I mindset anyway.
So the reason you did a follow-up to “The Great War’ itself was also because of the pandemic?
Yeah. The pandemic, and a couple of the stories that we had left behind, and the stories that are fans and friends sort of brought to light to us. It really made it the only choice for us.
It seems that for every song you write, there are a million other stories about these time periods. When doing your research, do you ever come across anything that surprises you, and you seem shocked that you didn’t know about?
For example, with me, I knew virtually nothing about the white war. It feels like that’s the sort of subject that should’ve been talked about, at least somewhat in school. Especially with it relating to the deadliest snow-based avalanche in history.
Yeah, on a fucking daily basis, it feels like! Sometimes, it’s easy to assume that we know more about history than we actually do. We are not experts, we are passionate amateurs, absolutely and we love history, but history is such a huge subject, and military history spreads over eras. Usually historians are focused on one era. For us to jump between eras, and every country having its own history, for example, what’s common knowledge in Brazil, is totally unheard of in Sweden.
There are so many fantastic stories hidden behind language barriers. Nothing against American history, but the advantage of the PR machine that is Hollywood, makes it so a lot of people know about American history thanks to that. But with me, even though I speak the language and all that, I barely know any history about Brazil in comparison to English, or Australian or Sweden, and Norwegian history as well.
And that’s the interesting part. Especially from the Eastern block countries whose own history has been suppressed by that time in the Soviet Union. They were supposed to learn Russian in school, and their national identity was sort of stripped away, and then in the 90s they became sort of the masters of their own future in their own way when the Berlin wall came down. All of a sudden, they could start telling the stories which was hidden behind a language barrier.
Chris has been doing more writing on this album, and if I remember correctly, I think one of the first songs that you worked with him on was ‘The Last Stand’. You had mentioned something about the chorus being challenging for you guys to write. What would you guys do when you’re working on a song together as a team, and neither of you can quite really bang it out, and you both are suffering from writer’s block?
Copious amounts of alcohol. It worked once, at least! But no, with Chris ‘The Last Stand’ was the first one I think, but we actually started on ‘Attack of the Dead Men’ in 2013, but we couldn’t think of a chorus. Everything else is the same, exactly how you hear it on ‘The Great War’ album, but we wrote that song in 2013, and it took us more than five years to finish it. I mean, we were not actively doing it every day, but every time we try to sit down and write a pre-chorus I got really angry and I’m just like, “it shouldn’t be so hard!” And then I just hummed something, and it was like okay that works. Then we’re done!
But with ‘The Last Stand’ we were micro-changing which harmonies moved up and down and stuff like that. The good thing about Chris is he’s as stubborn as I am and we’re both not afraid of conflict. It’s not like were punching each other but we are both believers in healthy competition. Sometimes it’s like, I don’t even like what I wrote, I end up liking the idea that he had, and he likes the idea that I had,better than what he wrote. And if we don’t agree, together we have to write something that is better. And if that takes his half a day, it’s fine.
It seems like you guys had a blast in particular on ‘Soldier of Heaven.’ And it’s not like you guys haven’t made use of electronics before, but this one seems to be a little bit more prominent, and you went full-on with an 80s retro vibe. Is that how you guys approach this song in particular? Did you just say, okay, let’s have fun, let’s see what sticks?
That’s an extremely good analysis because we were just finishing up, though we were not completely done with Hellfighters, Chris, and I, that is. And we were just so overloaded with moving drums and guitar riffs around, and we just felt like it shouldn’t be this hard. So we thought we would rest our mind and play something else. Rule number one, no complicated guitar riffs. And as you said, that was a very good observation; we just use the sounds, like on sent on Shiroyama and Lost Battalion and so on. Somewhere along the line, we were having so much fun playing around with it we didn’t even know we were writing a Sabaton song.
Some of us said it sounds very 80s, so I just grabbed some drum samples, and I have a folder with all kinds of old drum machine samples and just threw them in for fun. We were laughing and having so much fun. So then we just started thinking, what else sounds 80s? Handclaps! What else sounds 80s, guitars like Judas Priest on turbo! But we thought we needed a different rhythm, though. Then we had another percussive element, and had to write another percussive element that will control the way the guitar channel opened then closed on the chorus. We were just playing around and having fun, and Pär came by just said wow, that’s really catchy!
You mentioned Lost Battalion, and that’s something else that I noticed that you guys do on tracks, such as that. These subtle elements that can immerse you into the storytelling. Such as the gunfire and the bayonet on Lost Battalion, and the crashing waves on Dreadnought. Is that something you like to do often, adding these little subtle touches?
Yeah, when it makes sense, because it’s really easy to go overboard with these things, because once you start, it never ends. Every time we sing ‘gun,’ then there is a boom. There wouldn’t be any music left. But if it’s central to the song, like with the Dreadnought, I think it really helps with the atmosphere of the song, when it comes and goes and disappears. The trick is not to overdo it.
And with those storytelling aspects, you guys are once again doing another history version of the album. Which I’m happy to see. It’s great to have these little few seconds of context which adds quite a bit more to the subject matter that you’re going to be listening to. In some cases, like with ‘Devil Dogs’, I personally prefer the history version. Having those little few seconds there, it actually adds a lot to the song musically as well. Do you think you guys will continue to do history editions of all your albums moving forward?
I think so. Though I’m not sure about who would do the narrations, because we really love with what our narrator did here. I really like the concept of the history versions because, as you said, it gives context to the song. Unless you’re really in the history, with a couple listens of the song, you’re probably going to have to Google before you even know what it’s about. Like with Seven Pillars of Wisdom, before the song even starts, you already know that this is about Lawrence of Arabia, and that gives the song a whole new context.
So I do think we are going to be doing in some form or another, history editions without leaving out the other editions of course. I would actually recommend anyone the listens to a Sabaton album for the first time, listen to the history addition first. I think it makes your first experience with the album much better. But, after you’ve listened to it like 5 or 50 times, and you have friends over at the barbecue and your drinking beer for dinner, just go straight to the metal!
Speaking of Lawrence of Arabia, you released a video of The Unkillable soldier featuring Indy Neidell again, and it’s wonderful to see him back. That story is absolutely insane, and I can’t believe that stuff happened. And it’s super serious, but at the same time, with the video, you guys took a little bit of a lighthearted approach which I thought was fantastic, and it’s so over the top, it’s almost like a Monty Python skit.
Yeah, we were goofing around a lot with that. Because we wanted to get a lot of Indy in that. And not all of it is World War I, and we got a lot of flak from people in the comments saying things like, ‘that Tommy gun is two years too early!’ Not even mentioning the fact that he was not shot in the eye in World War I, he was shot dozen years earlier, you know? You missed that fact! But it’s as you said, it is us goofing around a bit. And I think if there’s one person who could take something like that, it’s Indy.
I’m assuming there’s going to be some more Sabaton history with him covering the remainder of The War To End All Wars. Is that something we can expect to see in the not-too-distant future?
Yes, I actually came back from Sweden a few days ago on a Monday, and I spent Saturday and Sunday recording more Sabaton histories with him, and we did like 4-5 new episodes. Though that was just the interview part, he still has to do the research and all that, so it might not come out as a weekly addition. But the machine is rolling again. There is stuff ready to be released as well, which is good.
You guys have such a vast discography and so many fan favorites, and of course, you will be primarily promoting songs from the new album when on tour, but how do you handle writing a setlist for something like that?
I have no idea. I think will have a random fall guy for every show. I think will ask some random fan to write the set list, and then will put his name and address on the screen and be like, this is the guy who wrote the set list, don’t complaint us!
Something that’s unique about you guys is the fact that your set can change depending on the location that you’re in. For example, Poland for sure would get Winged Hussars and Uprising.
Yeah! that’s something that keeps it fresh for us as well. Like with Primo Victoria, the song is really fun to play, but it’s actually the crowd that makes it different every night. We’re lucky in that sense, and these days we actually have data on every country on which songs are popular. It’s easy to fall into a trap and become complacent. It’s like, okay yeah we got a set list we know it, and it works, you guys go. However, it might not be the best setlist for that country. Or even in the United States, that particular state. Different songs are wanted more, or less, depending on the location.
So it is good to be tricky but will be to focus a lot more on World War I era stuff while trying to squeeze in some of the later releases that we’ve done, but the rest are going to be fan favorites.
When you guys finally get back to touring, I know your live shows are an incredible experience with the visuals, the gas mask, Pyro, the tanks, and the stage set up. Can we expect anything new added onto the current Great War style stage? I myself am just picturing something like snow effects during Soldier of Heaven. Any new effects such as that?
I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but yeah, we’ve taken what we’ve had for World War I and have expanded on it. More is more, and Sabaton is not a less is more band. So we started building the stage in October, and it is done and I actually saw it for the first time a couple of days ago. It looks really impressive, and of course, it looks a little bit like the previous one, but then again half the world didn’t see that show or stage, so we expanded on that concept.
Awesome, we deafly can’t wait to see it. Well thank you very much for speaking with me and I cannot wait for the album to be released and everyone else gets to hear it, as it is absolutely incredible. Is there anything else you’d like to say to the readers?
Thank you is all I can say. Thank you for all the memories, we’re looking forward to getting back out on the road again. And I would ask that fans just be a little patient because we are working day and night on sorting out when we can play and where. It’s not always up to us. In many cases, it’s restrictions on this and that or whatever, and there’s a lot of other bands out there and we’re not the only ones who want to hurry up and get back on the road. So trying to string a tour together is really difficult on a global scale.
I’m sure gets even more difficult these days than ever before to answer the question, ‘when are you playing in my city?’ Which I’m sure is the question that you guys get asked more than any other.
Yeah! if we could play anywhere at any time we would love to because we are starved for live shows. But we can’t play in London one day in Tokyo the next day in Los Angeles the next.
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