Sabaton | Interview: West Hollywood House of Blues - 5/2/2014
Metal Kitten: “How did it feel following up and topping your previous album that was a major success worldwide?”
Joakim Brodén: [Laughter] “It’s actually, I don’t know the word in English, performance anxiety, maybe? The worst case of that any wayI’ve ever had… it’s actually when I was writing new music. Because even thoughI am the one writing all the music, sometimes alone or sometimes with someone else, the problem is, for me, that not everybody knows that. If the album isnot going to be good enough, they’ll blame the new line up – Chris, Thobbe,Hannes. Maybe people are gonna think that, ‘Oh, they fucked up Sabaton.’ So, Iwas really in a bad place halfwaythrough the songwriting process. However, It did get much better after we started recording it.”
MK: “Did you feel a lot of pressure to have everything perfect?”
JB: “Yea, I think albums get blown out of proportion sometimes. Carolus Rex was a bigsuccess. We did sell platinum in Sweden. The last time hard rock or metal bandswent platinum is when Europe did TheFinal Countdown. Which is… not really yesterday.In that sense, we knew we had a lot to live up to. I don’t want to make people disappointed.
Actually, that’s my biggest fear. If somebody who doesn’t like Sabaton, and never will like Sabaton, that’s all right with me; if they think we are assholes, that’s okay with me, too. But if somebody who really likes Sabaton comes to a show and gets an album and thinks ‘Oh, I’m really disappointed,’that’s my biggest fear. No matter if it a show or an album, all we can hope for is to do our best.
Sometimes you’re not going to be as good on stage as the next night. I remember, for example, in Pamplona in 2012, actually throughout the wholeSpanish shows, I had salmonella. Even though I gave it all, of course it’s not going to be a perfect performance. Instead of jumping, I’m focusing more on notshitting myself.”
MK: “I’m sure you might make that clear to the fans, right?”
JB: “Noooooo.”
MK: “No? If you’re sick you don’t announce it?”
JB: “Well, if it’s obvious, but I wouldn’t use it as an excuse. I think it’s a crappy way out. For me, it’s a victory if I can do something – can do a show like that and nobody noticed. That would be the victory. Telling the crowd that’s, like, I’m not really sure how to compare it.”
MK: “It’s your responsibility as a performer to do the best you can, within your limitations (JB: “Agreed.”) but,if it gets to a certain point then you might have to say something, no?”
JB: “Yea well, if it’s something like talking with a hoarse voice then I would apologize for my voice, you know?”
MK: “You play things off really well during shows…”
JB: “I do my best, for sure.”
MK: “From my perspective at least, you’re one of the most empowering showmen in metal.”
JB: “Thank you. I’m happy to hear that.”
MK: “I think that comes through with the fans. I think you’re worried that you might not grab everybody, but from my experience in the crowd, once you’re set is done they’re amazed.They didn’t even know who you were and now you’re their favorite band.”
JB: [Laughter] “Well, in that case, I’m very happy I can manage to pull that off every now and then because that is really the hardest thing to do. It’s a bit easier in Europe actually – coming out and reaching to new fans. Obviously you have the European festival circuits, you know, if you go to one or three during a summer – which most metalheads do – you’re bound to hear new bands,people talking about it. You don’t have that same festival culture here in theU.S.”
MK: “No, and I think that’s what lacking [in the U.S.], but that’s also what’sinspiring for international touring bands here. You can make such a huge impact on a crowd that’s not very willing to get that impact. For example, you’ll have people there for Iced Earth, and no offense to Iced Earth they’re amazing, but you guys have stolen the show every single night. That must feel good?”
JB: “Yea, we want to be the best band, of course. I’m always the happiest if I, and I think it goes for most bands, can create a memory the crowd can go home with – a memory that all three bands were great. Of courseI want them to think Sabaton was better than the others. I’m sure Iced Earth wants everybody to think that all the three bands were great, but they’re not gonna be stupid – they want to be the best band as well.”
MK: “I think it’s the set. Your set is really dynamic. How do you go about putting that together; what is the thought process behind that?”
JB: “It’s a lot of work. We fix and tweak to get the mix – some fast songs,some slow songs. That’s obvious. Then there’s also which beats in these songs –‘Are there any sing-along moments? Should we pack all the sing-along stuff together? Should we spread them out?’ It’s a bit tricky, especially when you have a song like Primo Victoria when we try and get people to jump. I’m quite sureif we would have started the set with that we would not have so many peoplejumping. It takes a while to get into it.”
MK: “Well, you have to get comfortable with your fans – but that doesn’t take long with Sabaton. (JB: “I hope so!”) You have them by the first song, and the second song, it’s done, they’re yours.”
JB: “The problem is getting them warmed up so they actually dare to jump. Soeverybody can enjoy it.” [Laughter]
MK: “What was your thinking behind the pacing of the new album? What did you want to see from it while you were writing and rewriting it?”
JB: “When I had the song Night Witches, the first one, I knew this was probably the album opener. (MK: “Right when you wrote it?”) Yep. I already had the song Smoking Snakes which I thought was going to be the album opener until I had Night Witches, then I knew that was the one.”
MK: “I think after listening to the whole album, that [Night Witches] is your best song that you have ever written.”
JB: “Ah! Thank you!”
MK: “I think that maybe it’s the new line up, your consideration of the new line up, or your new conceptualization for the band, but it’s not a classic Sabaton song. It sounds new and fresh.”
JB: “Yes! That’s what we were going for because Smoking Snakes was Sabaton to the bone, there’s nothing but Sabaton there.”
MK: “No Bullets Fly, The Ballad of the Bull, and Soldier of 3 Armies: those are also in line with what Sabaton usually writes, but the other half of the album is completely new. That is what is so compelling about it.”
JB: “I’m happy you see it that way and like it. That’s the hardest part about songwriting – how do you keep your identity without repeating yourself too much?”
MK: “I’m sure people that have previewed the album have said that one song sounds like another, does that bother you at all?”
JB: “Ahhh, depends. Sometimes it is founded criticism because I have my own songwriting style and that will shine through, so yea, sometimes it is true. Some of the criticism it still bothers me even though it shouldn’t. Obviously, I am a musician and I pretty much know everything that’s happening on every instrument because I wrote it with that stuff. I’ll have people telling me ‘Oh, that songs reminds me of that one’ and I think back ‘Well, you know what I wrote every note on all those instruments and you are so wrong,’ but I can’t tell that to their face, can I?” [Laughter]
MK: “You’re the one that is the only one that does the songwriting?”
JB: “This time was the first time that I went to the band members. Soldier of 3 Armies I wrote with Thobbe. He had the main riff as an idea for his video blog and I thought it was cool. So we tried writing a song together and it became Soldier of 3 Armies.”
MK: “Do the new members feel like they have to fall in line with what you’ve written previously?”
JB: “Obviously I don’t write their solos. I write riffs in songs because that’s a part of the song structure, but they’re much better instrumentalists than I am, so why the fuck should I tell them what/how to write? Of course, we will all in the band have opinions no matter what it is – a guitar solo or my vocal performance or the drums – everybody has a say of course.”
MK: “When it comes down to lyrical content, the concept, do you like to go more thematic, conceptual, or do you like to do albums that have the songs stand on their own with their own story?”
JB: “I like the music, that is always a give. Remove the lyrics and it shouldstill be a good song. I also want the lyrics to be good by themselves. To be honest though, there’s only one or two I think that I am really, really happy about that marriage on every album. Only one or two per album – lyrics and music.”
MK: “What are those on this album then?”
JB: “Probably To Hell and Back is one of them.”
MK: “Was that fun to write, it sounds like it was fun to write. (JB: “Oh, yea!” [SharedLaughter]) That song is different for you, no? That Western theme.”
JB: “I like Spaghetti Westerns. It’s not that I’m a fan of anything but the music, so I had an idea to mix Spaghetti Western and metal. Everybody in theband told me I was stupid. Of course being a child as I am, I had to do it since they told me I couldn’t do it. I ended up writing the song and then I wasn’t sure – it’s kind of a playful theme, how can we, in a dignified way, honor a hero with something so playful? How can we tie this to the music? Then Audie Murphy turns up who starred in Western movies. There’s a link there, obviously. And what I really loved was reading his poems that he wrote after the war. In the song about him, he wrote a certain amount of the lyrics himself.”
MK: “Have you gotten a response from any of the survivors of these heroes?”
JB: “Not on these. We met the families of the 40:1 guys from Wizna. We met people from the Uprising song, also in Poland. A girl called Anna.”
MK: “You have such an outreach and that is so powerful and emotionally penetrating, I feel like it would touch people especially if someone was personally affected by or was a survivor of the event(s).”
JB: “Actually, we got a book signed from the McCallough family – the guy commanding the Screaming Eagles at that time. We were invited to the Screaming Eagles’ home base last time we were here [in the U.S.].”
MK: “Amazing. Is that really touching for you to see your work come full circle like that?”
JB: “That is one of the coolest things. Playing on the battlefield or meeting the people (or the unit) we sing about. Obviously whoever is fighting in the Screaming Eagles now weren’t fighting in World War II, but they carry on the same tradition and wear the same badge, you know? It’s kind of cool how American units honor the story of their unit. You don’t see that as much in Europe.
MK: “Do you have a favorite song on Heroes?”
JB: “It’s too early to tell, I think. It’ll take me sometime. If you ask me right now, it’s probably The Ballad of the Bull or Hearts of Iron, but that can change tomorrow.”
MK: “Was there anything in your upbringing that pushed you towards history, or was it something you discovered in your adult life; what makes you want to base your career on history?”
JB: “In 2003/2004, we had the song Primo Victoria but we didn’t have the lyrics. Both me and Pär knew that it had a big sound to it. We can’t just sing about drinking beer and fucking women on this one. We realized that D-Day, that’d be cool. When we did that, of course we knew the date (6th of June 1944) but we had to check some facts as we were writing it to realize that writing lyrics is not a necessary evil anymore – it’s actually fun. So, we said that we should make an album about war and military history. And we… went from there. We kind of stuck to it. There was never any big master plan with anything in Sabaton –our stage clothes, our music, our show – we grew into it. When me and Pär started playing together I was 18, he was 16/17. We didn’t have any sense of how the business worked or how to make an image or anything like that. In that sense I’m happy, everything we do has evolved naturally. We like to playing together, we sort of figured it out as we went along.”
MK: “Do you see a rise in heavy metal being more intellectual?”
JB: “I think that that’s the case, and I like it.”
MK: “Where do you see Sabaton in 2015/2016?”
JB: “[The tour supporting Heroes] will take us all over the world basically. I don’t have the exact plans, but we will do about 130 concerts in a year – 130 different concerts in different cities in 40/50 different countries. We will be in the U.S. more. Quite soon actually. Can’t talk details about that, but it will be later this year as it looks right now.”
MK: “Will it be in full support Heroes?”
JB: “We will be playing more from the Heroes album for sure.”
MK: “Will it be pretty Heroes-heavy with splashes here and there of your more popular tracks?”
JB: “A little bit of everything. We want to find out what people want.”
MK: “Do you mind playing the hits that everyone knows and are your most popular, or would you like to play an obscure set?”
JB: “We usually throw in a surprise or two that people wouldn’t’ expect. We like to throw these surprises in. It’s a really hard thing to find a setlist where we can make our existing fans happy and they’ll enjoy it, but also make sure we choose songs that are accessible for the first-timers because there are a lot of people that don’t know us. It’s a tricky balance.”
MK: “In closing, speak to the character of your fans. What are a few things that you want to say to them, what do you appreciate about them because they appreciate you so much?”
JB: “The only thing I can say to be honest is: thank you. We are lucky in that sense. Every band says that they have the best fans in the world. I haven’t played inanother band, so I can’t make a comparison. I do know that our fans have been extremely loyal to us and the way they gave the new band members a chance. We never saw a sign: ‘New Guys Go Home’. People were a bit reserved in thebeginning, but after the first few songs it’s like ‘Alright! New guys rock!’ then the party broke loose.”
Metal Kitten Studio would like to thank Nuclear Blast and Sabaton!
Sabaton is:
Joakim Brodén - Vocals
Pär Sundström - Bass
Chris Rörland - Guitars
Thobbe Englund - Guitars
Hannes van Dahl - Drums