Joakim Brodén - Sabaton 'There's No Law Against Doing What The F*ck You Want In A Heavy Metal Band'

Sweden’s metal masters Sabaton are headed back down under for a headline tour. It’s their first visit since Good Things Festival in 2022 and the amateur historians have a new album, Legends, out on October 17th via Better Noise Music.

Wall Of Sound jumped on a call with frontman Joakim Brodén to find out about the scope of the new album and what artillery they are bringing to Australian arenas.

As the singles have shown, Legends focuses on historical warriors and the battles they faced. It’s a new concept from the last two albums, which explored the people and battles of War War I. I had to ask Joakim what brought about the shift in direction, to which he explained:

“We were done with World War I, and that's at least almost modern warfare. I mean, we see the entrance onto the battlefield of tanks and the modern way of warfare, the birth of it at least. And it felt like we wanted to do something else, and it didn't have to be legends specifically. We have always got a bunch of ideas going on, but we felt like we wanted something that wasn't around [World War I].

So when we had the idea of Legends, which we've had in a bag for quite some time, we decided to sort of limit the legends from up until we said, Napoleon is a natural breaking point. Let's have him be the most modern of the legends, because it made sense as well, because Senusret III that we sing about in ‘The Cycle of Song’ is like 1800 years before Christ. And then we got Napoleon, which is 1800 years after Christ.”

‍Legends has some diversity to the kind of historical people, there’s several songs about Asian heroes, African warriors, as well as European icons including Caesar, Napoleon and Joan of Arc. I asked what led them down this path and focus on legends from different cultures. 

“It comes down to what feels right for us. Like, ooh, that gets us excited, oh, this one has to be there. To try and force it because it has to be there, it's less likely to be good, the end product, while if we do something that even though it doesn't make that much sense. [Like] Senusret III, I mean, yeah, it's Africa actually, but how many thought of him as a legend before that? But it felt right. So in a certain way we have ideas for what we want to do, but also the music decides, do we have the right music for that story? Yes or no? And then secondly, are we feeling excited about that thing right now?”

After the epic two albums about World War I, I wondered whether there might be more to the Legends concept than the album’s eleven tracks. I asked Joakim if anyone didn’t make the cut this time. 

“Alexander the Great didn't make the cut. He made the cut, but we didn't have the right music.

We had 30, 40 legends we wanted to cover. Obviously we can't write that many songs or well, we could, but people would wait for another two years for the album then.

But it's the same thing when we did The Great War and we wanted to do ‘Christmas Truth’, but we didn't have it. We didn't have the right song. So no, Alexander the Great didn't make it. There were several who didn't make it.

I'm not going to say we're going to make a second Legends album, but I want to make a song about Alexander the Great. I mean, it is allowed and legal to do singles and record stuff. I mean, there's no law against doing what the fuck you want [in a] heavy metal band.”

All this talk of Alexander had me wondering - having previously covered military themed songs by Metallica and Motörhead, could a Sabaton ‘Alexander’ single be backed by a cover of Iron Maiden’s ‘Alexander the Great’?

“Ooh, Chris would like that for sure. He's a huge maiden fan. It's weird. It's like it wasn't that long ago. He and our guitar tech, Andy were in, I don't know where they were. I think they were in the rehearsal space in hq, and then he was playing around with Iron Maiden songs. And Chris plays a lot of guitar and he's done it thousands and thousands of hours. And we all know he's a good guitar player, but how good his memory is, it's fucking scary because Andy, our guitar tech tried tested him like, “okay, I'll say a Maiden song, and you have to play it.” And Chris was like, “Yeah, do I have to play it perfectly instantly or can I have 20 seconds and then play it?” He's like, oh, you can have your 20 seconds, ha ha". And Andy tried by calling out weird fucking Maiden songs that most people wouldn't think about, and no, Chris named them all.”

Joakim also revealed why Sabaton recently released ‘The Duelist’ and ‘Lightening at the Gates’ on the same day. It turns out between their new label and others who’ve heard the record, the level of consistency has made it hard to pick stand out tracks for singles. 

“Because we couldn’t fucking decide! We've never had such a spread on, oh, you should make this song the single, oh, that's the best one. I mean, there are a few that aren't mentioned very often, but the spread in general. Let's say, usually you'll find two or three songs who take the most popular spot, and on this one, it feels like it's half the album or more five, six songs that are sort of being evenly spread out as the best or most single potential or whatever.”

Before the album's release, Sabaton will be in Australia and New Zealand from September 1st. Having last been here playing festivals, what can fans expect from Sabaton in an arena?

‍“We'll have more than the festival show Good Things stuff for sure, but unfortunately, we won't be able to bring the full European science production because that's 20,000, 15,000 arenas. And yeah, we'd be bankrupt - bankrupt for the three shows down there if we tried. It's a fine line … it's so weird. But we are lucky in a sense, because we are, well, our fame is unevenly distributed around the world, which is a good thing in some ways because it's so awesome to go and be able to, in some places, do somewhat smaller shows when you can actually see the people in the back, which is an amazing feeling, that medium sized venues. On the other hand, sometimes when it turns out you are more popular than you thought, like, oh shit, and we only managed to bring this, we should maybe have brought more for the show, pyro might suffer. Of course, [there are] different rules and regulations in every country. Also big stage props suffer heavily. When we were talking about these, I mean, we were recently in Latin America where we could certainly do good numbers, but nothing compared to Europe. So it's not like we're going to fly around with a tank. And try to take it everywhere. So those things are trickier.”

Having never tried to do so myself, I had to ask: How do you get a tank through customs?

“Well, I'll tell you one thing. You do not call it a tank. You call it a stage prop. That's a very important distinction. And we learned that the hard way.

But yeah, it's usually we try and bring as much as we can and we try and explain it to the customs as good as possible, because we've had mic stands like M sixteens or machine guns or whatever over the years, and then you call it stage prop mic stand in the shape of one weapon.”

I shared with Joakim that I had the best time at their Good Things set a few years ago. One of the things that struck me was that the songs are a very serious subject matter, but I couldn't believe how energetic and engaged the crowd was. It was very serious music and subject matter, but a hell of a good time. It's songs about war, which inevitably involves both victory and suffering, but how does Joakim make sure the audience enjoys themselves while they're watching?

“I mean, you are right. It's a paradox in a way. We do sing about a lot of these really serious subject matters. We're not maybe going ahead bang if we play the song of 'The Final Solution' , which is about the Holocaust. So it depends on the song or the subject at hand. However, I mean, we don't take ourselves very serious. We love playing heavy metal and we're having a good time on stage. And I don't think people go to a heavy metal concert to contemplate the death of hundreds of thousands of people over a few weeks in Paschandale.
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So I think we create the music or the lyrics and everything, and that's the serious part. And once that is done, if you want to listen to it and think about that for the first couple of times, maybe I think about the subject matter as well after that, it just becomes songs and good memories. I mean, I got tonnes of good memories of ‘Primo Victoria’ all over the earth. It's been with us for a very long time. It's quite a popular song usually in our set. And I can close my eyes and think back on 15 years ago when we were on this and this festival in let's say Belgium, and that funny thing happened. Let's just say I got very different memories of D-Day than people who were there.

It's a bit of a paradox, but yeah, we take the music and the topic seriously, but once we've done that, we put it on the album, we go and play, then it's a good time.”

So we know we are getting a good show on this run, something closer to the full Sabaton live show fans have always wanted. What is Joakim looking forward to on this headlining tour?

“I'm looking forward to coming down. I mean, not the travel, as I said, but being down there, it's always a fucking fantastic time. People are so nice and I'm actually looking forward to not being scorched in the heat for once.”

Interview by KJ Draven @kjdraven

Pre Order Legends here. 

Sabaton - Legends tracklisting

1. Templars
2. Hordes of Khan
3. A Tiger Among Dragons
4. Crossing the Rubicon
5. I, Emperor
6. Maid of Steel
7. Impaler
8. Lightning at the Gates
9. The Duelist
10. The Cycle of Songs 11. Till Seger