Following the monumental release, Carolus Rex, Sabaton are once again prepared for war with another terrific album. Choosing this time around to focus on the greatness of individuals in war/battle history, Heroes stands as yet another testament to the unique and moving storytelling of vocalist, bandleader and main songwriter, Joakim Brodén. In a very upbeat and exciting interview, Joakim took the time with Metal Exiles to delve deep into the individual song meanings, and offer an inside look into the creation of this terrific new album.
An Interview with Joakim Brodén of Sabaton
By John Knowles
Metal Exiles: Hey, this is John from Metal Exiles out in California, U.S.A. How are you, Joakim?
Joakim Brodén: Not bad. I’ve only had a few interviews so far, so you don’t have me too tired yet, which usually happens after hours of interviews. But I’m good to go!
Metal Exiles: Let’s talk about the new album. The new album is titled, Heroes, and as far as I can tell the lyrics revolve around heroic themes and heroic people. Is that in line with your take on the album?
Joakim Brodén: Yeah. The album focuses more on the individual acts and performances of individual people and smaller groups than is normal for us. I mean, obviously I’ve done that before but we don’t focus on any major battle but we focus on individual courage.
Metal Exiles: The album features 10 solid tracks. I want to touch on the basic topics and themes of each song as we go through this interview. Would you mind walking our readers through the basic topics of the first few songs?
Joakim: Of course! I am happy to do this. I am happy to talk about history rather than just metal (laughs)! First up is “Night Witches,” which actually is a story about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. They were female bomber pilots fighting for Russia. They were in old World War I planes even though they were fighting in World War II. They would only give the women the bad, shitty planes, and they didn’t want the rest of the world knowing they had women flying for them so they would only fly at night. Since they had those shitty planes, made of only wood and canvas, they were so slow that any German could overtake them and shoot them down so they would fly really high through the air and then for the last mile they would idle their engines – so they would turn their engines off – and they would glide because they were so light towards their targets. Then they would drop their bombs, and then try and start their engines and get back home before the Germans caught up with them. That’s how they got their name, because the German’s thought, “the Night Witches are coming” when they heared the whooshing through the sky – a noise that would remind them of witches on broomsticks. They did several thousand missions. While most of the allies would do their typical 25 missions before heading back home, some of these women in the Soviet Union did over 25 missions a week, and sometimes it may have even been 10 a night, because they could only carry one bomb in those crappy planes.
Next up is “No Bullets Fly,” which is also about aviation, but this is about a North American pilot flying the B17 Flying Fortress. And there’s a German officer spotting from the ground who notices the low flying plane as it had just come back from a raid. When the German officer flies close to the American one he realizes that the American plane is severely damaged. So instead of shooting it down and following orders he risks his own life by going in close to the bomber – he was in range of the cannons – and then he escorted them to safety. Without shooting them down. [Referring to the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler Incident, 1943]
The third is “Smoking Snakes.” It’s about the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. It’s quite an interesting tale. I think it’s as you guys say, “When pigs fly” – meaning it’s never gonna happen. And they had “Brazil will go to war when the snakes smoke.” And in the end, they got the Expeditionary Force out, and the motto for them, the men among them, was “the snake is smoking.” Quite heroic deeds from these guys. Just outside Montese three guys stayed behind while the rest drew back from the German attack. And when the others came back and had recovered this ground, they discovered that the German’s had killed these three Brazilians, but before leaving they stopped to dig them a grave and written in German wrote, “Here rests three Brazilian heroes.” The German’s had so much respect for their heroism that they did this.
Metal Exiles: Cool. I’d love to hear more about the other songs from you in a bit, but I want to ask you about the creation of the new album.
Carolus Rex was a monumental release for you guys. In my opinion, and many fans I’ve spoken with, it is Sabaton’s finest hour. What were your thoughts going in to the writing process for Heroes knowing you had such an amazing achievement to follow up?
Joakim: Well, to be honest, not quite to the extent that I wanted to kill myself, but almost there. Because not only do I want us to do better, there was also the thing where we have a lot of new band members now. Even though I was the one writing Carolus Rex. Actually, I wrote some stuff with other people from the band, but in general I’m the only one whose written every song, or been involved in every song by the band. So there was kind a feeling that if I fuck this up, and don’t write good enough songs, people are still going to blame the new guitarists, Chris and Thobbe. They’ll say, “Oh, they lost it.” So in that sense I was really, really worried. But on the other hand, Chris and Thobbe proved themselves musically quite well. All the guitars were done in just four days. I’ve never seen so much good guitar work get put down so fast in my life, and I’ve been doing this for 15 years.
Metal Exiles: What about keyboards? Will the band continue to work without a main keyboardist, and tour using backing tracks in the future?
Joakim: I think we’re going to continue as a five-piece. But you know, I started in Sabaton 15 years ago as the keyboard player. I was planning on singing until we found a new singer. So I’m originally a Hammond and church organ player. So nothing has changed in that sense, and I played up until 2008 on all Sabaton albums. So I would sit at a computer and program on the synth, so I played them...until about 2008. So it is real, and you can hear it on some stuff like the piano being played by a human being on the song “The Ballad of Bull.” But in that case I deemed myself not good enough, so I had a close friend play the piano part there.
Metal Exiles: Even on Swedish Empire Live you guys played along the keyboard tracks. But it still sounds amazing and you guys pull it off just fine.
Joakim: I still kind of miss it. I still somehow miss the pride of having everything performed live, because even if we only have a keyboard and click tracks coming out of the speakers there’s always going to be people wondering, “Hmmm, are there extra guitars or extra choirs.” I’d like to put an end to that, you know? I’d like to say this is all fucking live. We even had people before we used backing tracks asking, “Who runs the backing track machine, and what are all the choirs made up of?” We would just say thank you! That’s the biggest praise of all, thank you, we are all live. So in that sense I would like a keyboardist, but on the other hand, and with Carolus Rex especially, there came so many symphonic influences, especially on a song like “A Lifetime of War.” There’s basically so much happening, synth or orchestral-wise that even if we had a keyboardist we’d still be stuck with the fucking click tracks! So in that sense, we haven’t decided really. We always said we would keep the keyboardist if the right guy came up, but it would really have to be the right guy for us to be a six-piece again.
Metal Exiles: Can you go over a few more stories on the album?
Joakim: The next track to cover is “Inmate 4859.” Polish soldier, resistance man, named Witold Pilecki. The story’s so fantastic I don’t know why Hollywood hasn’t made twenty pictures of it already. But it’s basically about a guy who hears the rumors about Auschwitz and the exterminations they had. People don’t believe this so he gets falsified papers that he’s a Jew and ensures his capture at Warsaw and is sent to Auschwitz. He voluntarily gets caught, captured, and sent to Auschwitz. He spends two and half years in Auschwitz organizing the resistance. He then escapes with the evidence and then goes around saying that he had the proof. He tells everyone that people are being executed and they say, “No, you are exaggerating, got to hell.” So this guy basically says “In that case I’m not going to spend any more time arguing with you. There’s an uprising in Warsaw, I’m going there to fight.” He fights in the Warsaw uprising. In the end though, he is executed because during his time in the war he had had contact with the British intelligence services, and that in Soviet eyes made him a spy so he was executed. I would recommend anyone to start out with a Wikipedia read of that guy, it’s quite a fantastic story.
And then we have “To Hell and Back,” I believe. This one is about one of your most famous and decorated soldiers in all of war history, Audie Murphy. He came back from World War II and became kind of a big, western movie star. This guy, I’m quite sure, the scene in Rambo III where he basically takes out half an army by himself is quite close to what Audie Murphy actually did sometimes. I don’t think I’ve ever had a song where I think the music has fitted more. He wrote poetry as well, and actually parts of this song we’ve taken his words from his poetry about his experiences. So where we sing on the chorus, “Crosses grow on Anzio, where no soldiers sleep and hell’s six feet deep.” That’s actually from his original words about his experiences there. Emotionally this is one of the closest to my heart, because it seems like everything came together – even though there was no plan – the fact that this song has some Western music influence and we have this guy and he turns out that he became a major Western Hollywood star, and then he wrote poetry and we could incorporate his poetry about his experiences in the lyrics...I mean, too many things came together for it just to be a coincidence.
“Battle of the Bull” is about an Australian stretcher-bearer during World War II in New Guinea. Leslie “Bull” Allen and his men, along with some Americans were ambushed on Mt. Tambu. And up on that hill most people ran down, but he went up instead through Japanese machine-gun fire. He went up and he carried an American soldier down. He said to his friends, “Come on, we have to help,” and they said, “No! we’re gonna die up there.” This guy walked twelve times up and down that hill and every time he walked back with a soldier on his shoulder. Quite an amazing story. What’s interesting is that he got a U.S. silver cross, or silver star, but Australia never gave him a medal at all.
Metal Exiles: The cover art for Heroes is some of the best work I’ve seen on any Sabaton album to date. What can you tell us about the inspiration behind the artwork, and what it depicts?
Joakim: Thank you, finally! So many people have been giving us a lot of shit about that artwork.
Metal Exiles: Really? It’s badass, man.
Joakim: Yeah, I’m not sure why. We said to our art guy, “We’re going to make an album called Heroes and we want it to be dark and a little bit more brutal. Not in any way glorifying war or anything. So he gave us a picture of an American soldier kicking the shit out of a German soldier. Okay, it might be a bit stereotypical, but I was going for the feeling and I thought, “Yes! This is the feeling I want. This is what I would like to buy myself and have on an LP on my wall.” Then all of the sudden people started bitching at us that it was too much pro-American. And then some people said it was anti-German and I had to say, “Why the fuck to we keep bringing politics into a fucking heavy metal cover artwork?” So I still think it’s quite sad in that sense, but I agree with you, I think it’s one of our best artworks ever.
Metal Exiles: The band is gearing up for a U.S. tour with Iced Earth and ReVamp. What are you most looking forward to about this tour, and is this the first tour support for the new record?
Joakim: Yeah, I don’t know actually, we are all ready to start playing some of this stuff. The first single for the album is “To Hell and Back,” about Audie Murphy, which musically has some interesting twists as well. And we’re ready to play that song, but we are not going to do it until the single is released of course. So hopefully, I don’t know if we can pull it off, depending on release dates and that, but hopefully we’ll be starting on this tour by the time the single is out and we can play that song at least from the new album. Other than that we’re digging into some stuff that we haven’t played in a while. We’ve been to America several times and we rarely play the song “Screaming Eagles” from Coat of Arms, which is about the 101st Airborne Regiment. It’s also very tough for a drummer to perform that song. Our new drummer has no such problems so we thought, “Hell yeah, we can play this song again.”
Metal Exiles: How do you feel the band’s response is in the States, and is there any chance you guys would be able to do your own headlining tour of the U.S. in the future?
Joakim: Yes we do! I still think we need one more support round after this. If you care about money than you’d always rather do the support run, but our main mission has always been that we should go out as a support band first before we do it. It’s a bit of a different thing, and to be honest, yes we are always ten times smaller in the U.S. than we are in Europe. A good headlining show in Europe we would have 6,000 people. A good headlining show for us in the U.S. is gonna be 600...that’s what we had with our CD release party for Carolus Rex, and that’s about the best we ever had in the U.S. On the other hand I kind of like it, because it’s like a time machine. I get to be close to the crowd again. They’re not 15 feet away behind a fence. If I head-bang or move too much the audience is going to get wet from my sweat. And a lot of energy is a bit lost if the distance between the stage and crowd is too big. It has to be so many more people there to get the feeling back from the energy, but the communication between the crowd and the band is lost. But you go into these places where you play for maybe 200, or 600, or up to 800 or 1,000 it’s still possible to have this real intimate magic. I’d say after about 1500 or 1800 it’s not possible anymore.
Metal Exiles: There are still a few more tracks to cover. Would you please share their stories?
Joakim: “Resist and Bite.” It’s about 40 men in the Belgian Chasseurs Ardennais. They have the order already that they are to fight, and hold their ground no matter what, never surrender. Then there is an error in communication, and for some reason they don’t get the new order later which is Rommel and Guderian are both coming – two of the best generals Germany had at that time... “we’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.” They don’t here this, and only 40 men actually slowed these two armies down for so long that when they’re captured – they used all kinds of tactics, they used their clothes and soaked them so they were all wet, and put them in the cannons, which made the cannons boom more so they sounded like bigger cannons. And they’d run in between and do all of these tactics to slow them down, but they didn’t try to win because they knew they couldn’t. When they were captured the German commander asked them, “where are the rest?” So they started laughing because they told him they were it.
After that one is “Soldier of Three Armies.” Finish guy, Lauri Törni was his name. He started out in Finland, of course, fighting against the Soviet Union during the Winter War. Then he switched, because he thought his country was ass-raped over the peace treaty with Russia. So he goes over and joins the SS because it means he can keep fighting the Soviets. After World War II is over he ends up in prison, but then later pardoned. He then goes to America, and changes his name to Larry Thorne. He’s buried in Arlington Memorial after he died in Viet Nam as a Green Beret, special operations officer. So he’s one of the few guys who achieved officer status and awarded with medals in three different countries. I guess soldier was the right profession for him.
“Far From the Fame” is next. This one’s about a Czech fighter pilot, Karel Janoušek, although he didn’t fight as much as he arranged the whole possibility of a Czech air force. He moved to the UK and became the first and only air marshal in the Czech air force at all. But he made it possible for several, several units to keep on fighting. There were other countries fighting under the Queen as well, but among the best fighter pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain were the Czech and the Polish ones. They weren’t even invited to the victory parade because they were Czech or Polish. In those times it was natural, I mean they were considered second-class citizens so the UK thought, “why should we have them?” I don’t blame England for that at all because that was how everyone reasoned back in those days. This one’s kind of close to my heart because my mother is from the Czech Republic and you can’t find too many fighting heroes from the Czech Republic especially because many didn’t even have the chance to fight. Back in 1938 before the war even started Germany came in and said, “We have to save our German brothers who live in the Czech Republic, so now it belongs to Germany.” Not much you can do about that.
The last one is “Hearts of Iron.” Some think it’s a bit controversial because it’s a song on an album called Heroes about a German general. His name was Walter Wenck and he was Hilter’s last hope in the battle of Berlin. He had orders to basically defeat the Russians. Walter knew this just wasn’t going to happen. He knew this was over so he said to his aids and to his troops, “Guys this is not about the Reich anymore, this is not about Berlin either, it’s about saving people. This thing we are doing now is not a battle, it’s a humanitarian operation and we need to get as many people out as possible. On this side of Berlin is the Soviet Union and they are killing, raping, and plundering. We probably deserve it”...because some of the Germans were really fucking assholes when they traveled east, but “the people of Berlin should not have to pay.” So he actually made a corridor throughout the city, and almost a quarter of a million men, women, and civilians made it out, and could cross over the Elbe River and surrender to the Americans. In a little bit of a sick twist the final hero of our album is a hero from the wrong side, and a general at that.
Metal Exiles: Sabaton has been fortunate enough to play many venues across the globe, including historic sites, a Sabaton cruise ship, and even a spinning class in Sweden. What goals do you still have for the band, such as locations, historic sites, touring partners, etc?
Joakim: It’s basically still children’s ideas. I mean I’ve never been to Japan. I want to go there, I want to see it, I want to play there...the culture, the history, but the biggest dream show is the 6th of June. It should have been this year, 2014, but we’re not big enough in France to do it. But we want to put on a show on Omaha Beach, where D-Day happened. We want to have a stage on the German boundaries, and have the crowd come in from the sea and go to the stage the way the soldiers went ashore. I want to do that someday...I don’t know how, but I want to fucking make it happen before I die.
Metal Exiles: Sounds like a good dream, man. And one that really could happen someday. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, Joakim. The new album is killer, and best of luck to you guys on tour.
Joakim: Thanks! Take care.
Heroes will be released via Nuclear Blast Records on May 16, 2014.
Watch the official lyric video for “To Hell And Back”
WATCH The Story of Heroes – Chapter I
Purchase Tickets for the Worldwide Plagues Tour North America
An Interview with Joakim Brodén of Sabaton
By John Knowles
Metal Exiles: Hey, this is John from Metal Exiles out in California, U.S.A. How are you, Joakim?
Joakim Brodén: Not bad. I’ve only had a few interviews so far, so you don’t have me too tired yet, which usually happens after hours of interviews. But I’m good to go!
Metal Exiles: Let’s talk about the new album. The new album is titled, Heroes, and as far as I can tell the lyrics revolve around heroic themes and heroic people. Is that in line with your take on the album?
Joakim Brodén: Yeah. The album focuses more on the individual acts and performances of individual people and smaller groups than is normal for us. I mean, obviously I’ve done that before but we don’t focus on any major battle but we focus on individual courage.
Metal Exiles: The album features 10 solid tracks. I want to touch on the basic topics and themes of each song as we go through this interview. Would you mind walking our readers through the basic topics of the first few songs?
Joakim: Of course! I am happy to do this. I am happy to talk about history rather than just metal (laughs)! First up is “Night Witches,” which actually is a story about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. They were female bomber pilots fighting for Russia. They were in old World War I planes even though they were fighting in World War II. They would only give the women the bad, shitty planes, and they didn’t want the rest of the world knowing they had women flying for them so they would only fly at night. Since they had those shitty planes, made of only wood and canvas, they were so slow that any German could overtake them and shoot them down so they would fly really high through the air and then for the last mile they would idle their engines – so they would turn their engines off – and they would glide because they were so light towards their targets. Then they would drop their bombs, and then try and start their engines and get back home before the Germans caught up with them. That’s how they got their name, because the German’s thought, “the Night Witches are coming” when they heared the whooshing through the sky – a noise that would remind them of witches on broomsticks. They did several thousand missions. While most of the allies would do their typical 25 missions before heading back home, some of these women in the Soviet Union did over 25 missions a week, and sometimes it may have even been 10 a night, because they could only carry one bomb in those crappy planes.
Next up is “No Bullets Fly,” which is also about aviation, but this is about a North American pilot flying the B17 Flying Fortress. And there’s a German officer spotting from the ground who notices the low flying plane as it had just come back from a raid. When the German officer flies close to the American one he realizes that the American plane is severely damaged. So instead of shooting it down and following orders he risks his own life by going in close to the bomber – he was in range of the cannons – and then he escorted them to safety. Without shooting them down. [Referring to the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler Incident, 1943]
The third is “Smoking Snakes.” It’s about the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. It’s quite an interesting tale. I think it’s as you guys say, “When pigs fly” – meaning it’s never gonna happen. And they had “Brazil will go to war when the snakes smoke.” And in the end, they got the Expeditionary Force out, and the motto for them, the men among them, was “the snake is smoking.” Quite heroic deeds from these guys. Just outside Montese three guys stayed behind while the rest drew back from the German attack. And when the others came back and had recovered this ground, they discovered that the German’s had killed these three Brazilians, but before leaving they stopped to dig them a grave and written in German wrote, “Here rests three Brazilian heroes.” The German’s had so much respect for their heroism that they did this.
Metal Exiles: Cool. I’d love to hear more about the other songs from you in a bit, but I want to ask you about the creation of the new album.
Carolus Rex was a monumental release for you guys. In my opinion, and many fans I’ve spoken with, it is Sabaton’s finest hour. What were your thoughts going in to the writing process for Heroes knowing you had such an amazing achievement to follow up?
Joakim: Well, to be honest, not quite to the extent that I wanted to kill myself, but almost there. Because not only do I want us to do better, there was also the thing where we have a lot of new band members now. Even though I was the one writing Carolus Rex. Actually, I wrote some stuff with other people from the band, but in general I’m the only one whose written every song, or been involved in every song by the band. So there was kind a feeling that if I fuck this up, and don’t write good enough songs, people are still going to blame the new guitarists, Chris and Thobbe. They’ll say, “Oh, they lost it.” So in that sense I was really, really worried. But on the other hand, Chris and Thobbe proved themselves musically quite well. All the guitars were done in just four days. I’ve never seen so much good guitar work get put down so fast in my life, and I’ve been doing this for 15 years.
Metal Exiles: What about keyboards? Will the band continue to work without a main keyboardist, and tour using backing tracks in the future?
Joakim: I think we’re going to continue as a five-piece. But you know, I started in Sabaton 15 years ago as the keyboard player. I was planning on singing until we found a new singer. So I’m originally a Hammond and church organ player. So nothing has changed in that sense, and I played up until 2008 on all Sabaton albums. So I would sit at a computer and program on the synth, so I played them...until about 2008. So it is real, and you can hear it on some stuff like the piano being played by a human being on the song “The Ballad of Bull.” But in that case I deemed myself not good enough, so I had a close friend play the piano part there.
Metal Exiles: Even on Swedish Empire Live you guys played along the keyboard tracks. But it still sounds amazing and you guys pull it off just fine.
Joakim: I still kind of miss it. I still somehow miss the pride of having everything performed live, because even if we only have a keyboard and click tracks coming out of the speakers there’s always going to be people wondering, “Hmmm, are there extra guitars or extra choirs.” I’d like to put an end to that, you know? I’d like to say this is all fucking live. We even had people before we used backing tracks asking, “Who runs the backing track machine, and what are all the choirs made up of?” We would just say thank you! That’s the biggest praise of all, thank you, we are all live. So in that sense I would like a keyboardist, but on the other hand, and with Carolus Rex especially, there came so many symphonic influences, especially on a song like “A Lifetime of War.” There’s basically so much happening, synth or orchestral-wise that even if we had a keyboardist we’d still be stuck with the fucking click tracks! So in that sense, we haven’t decided really. We always said we would keep the keyboardist if the right guy came up, but it would really have to be the right guy for us to be a six-piece again.
Metal Exiles: Can you go over a few more stories on the album?
Joakim: The next track to cover is “Inmate 4859.” Polish soldier, resistance man, named Witold Pilecki. The story’s so fantastic I don’t know why Hollywood hasn’t made twenty pictures of it already. But it’s basically about a guy who hears the rumors about Auschwitz and the exterminations they had. People don’t believe this so he gets falsified papers that he’s a Jew and ensures his capture at Warsaw and is sent to Auschwitz. He voluntarily gets caught, captured, and sent to Auschwitz. He spends two and half years in Auschwitz organizing the resistance. He then escapes with the evidence and then goes around saying that he had the proof. He tells everyone that people are being executed and they say, “No, you are exaggerating, got to hell.” So this guy basically says “In that case I’m not going to spend any more time arguing with you. There’s an uprising in Warsaw, I’m going there to fight.” He fights in the Warsaw uprising. In the end though, he is executed because during his time in the war he had had contact with the British intelligence services, and that in Soviet eyes made him a spy so he was executed. I would recommend anyone to start out with a Wikipedia read of that guy, it’s quite a fantastic story.
And then we have “To Hell and Back,” I believe. This one is about one of your most famous and decorated soldiers in all of war history, Audie Murphy. He came back from World War II and became kind of a big, western movie star. This guy, I’m quite sure, the scene in Rambo III where he basically takes out half an army by himself is quite close to what Audie Murphy actually did sometimes. I don’t think I’ve ever had a song where I think the music has fitted more. He wrote poetry as well, and actually parts of this song we’ve taken his words from his poetry about his experiences. So where we sing on the chorus, “Crosses grow on Anzio, where no soldiers sleep and hell’s six feet deep.” That’s actually from his original words about his experiences there. Emotionally this is one of the closest to my heart, because it seems like everything came together – even though there was no plan – the fact that this song has some Western music influence and we have this guy and he turns out that he became a major Western Hollywood star, and then he wrote poetry and we could incorporate his poetry about his experiences in the lyrics...I mean, too many things came together for it just to be a coincidence.
“Battle of the Bull” is about an Australian stretcher-bearer during World War II in New Guinea. Leslie “Bull” Allen and his men, along with some Americans were ambushed on Mt. Tambu. And up on that hill most people ran down, but he went up instead through Japanese machine-gun fire. He went up and he carried an American soldier down. He said to his friends, “Come on, we have to help,” and they said, “No! we’re gonna die up there.” This guy walked twelve times up and down that hill and every time he walked back with a soldier on his shoulder. Quite an amazing story. What’s interesting is that he got a U.S. silver cross, or silver star, but Australia never gave him a medal at all.
Metal Exiles: The cover art for Heroes is some of the best work I’ve seen on any Sabaton album to date. What can you tell us about the inspiration behind the artwork, and what it depicts?
Joakim: Thank you, finally! So many people have been giving us a lot of shit about that artwork.
Metal Exiles: Really? It’s badass, man.
Joakim: Yeah, I’m not sure why. We said to our art guy, “We’re going to make an album called Heroes and we want it to be dark and a little bit more brutal. Not in any way glorifying war or anything. So he gave us a picture of an American soldier kicking the shit out of a German soldier. Okay, it might be a bit stereotypical, but I was going for the feeling and I thought, “Yes! This is the feeling I want. This is what I would like to buy myself and have on an LP on my wall.” Then all of the sudden people started bitching at us that it was too much pro-American. And then some people said it was anti-German and I had to say, “Why the fuck to we keep bringing politics into a fucking heavy metal cover artwork?” So I still think it’s quite sad in that sense, but I agree with you, I think it’s one of our best artworks ever.
Metal Exiles: The band is gearing up for a U.S. tour with Iced Earth and ReVamp. What are you most looking forward to about this tour, and is this the first tour support for the new record?
Joakim: Yeah, I don’t know actually, we are all ready to start playing some of this stuff. The first single for the album is “To Hell and Back,” about Audie Murphy, which musically has some interesting twists as well. And we’re ready to play that song, but we are not going to do it until the single is released of course. So hopefully, I don’t know if we can pull it off, depending on release dates and that, but hopefully we’ll be starting on this tour by the time the single is out and we can play that song at least from the new album. Other than that we’re digging into some stuff that we haven’t played in a while. We’ve been to America several times and we rarely play the song “Screaming Eagles” from Coat of Arms, which is about the 101st Airborne Regiment. It’s also very tough for a drummer to perform that song. Our new drummer has no such problems so we thought, “Hell yeah, we can play this song again.”
Metal Exiles: How do you feel the band’s response is in the States, and is there any chance you guys would be able to do your own headlining tour of the U.S. in the future?
Joakim: Yes we do! I still think we need one more support round after this. If you care about money than you’d always rather do the support run, but our main mission has always been that we should go out as a support band first before we do it. It’s a bit of a different thing, and to be honest, yes we are always ten times smaller in the U.S. than we are in Europe. A good headlining show in Europe we would have 6,000 people. A good headlining show for us in the U.S. is gonna be 600...that’s what we had with our CD release party for Carolus Rex, and that’s about the best we ever had in the U.S. On the other hand I kind of like it, because it’s like a time machine. I get to be close to the crowd again. They’re not 15 feet away behind a fence. If I head-bang or move too much the audience is going to get wet from my sweat. And a lot of energy is a bit lost if the distance between the stage and crowd is too big. It has to be so many more people there to get the feeling back from the energy, but the communication between the crowd and the band is lost. But you go into these places where you play for maybe 200, or 600, or up to 800 or 1,000 it’s still possible to have this real intimate magic. I’d say after about 1500 or 1800 it’s not possible anymore.
Metal Exiles: There are still a few more tracks to cover. Would you please share their stories?
Joakim: “Resist and Bite.” It’s about 40 men in the Belgian Chasseurs Ardennais. They have the order already that they are to fight, and hold their ground no matter what, never surrender. Then there is an error in communication, and for some reason they don’t get the new order later which is Rommel and Guderian are both coming – two of the best generals Germany had at that time... “we’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.” They don’t here this, and only 40 men actually slowed these two armies down for so long that when they’re captured – they used all kinds of tactics, they used their clothes and soaked them so they were all wet, and put them in the cannons, which made the cannons boom more so they sounded like bigger cannons. And they’d run in between and do all of these tactics to slow them down, but they didn’t try to win because they knew they couldn’t. When they were captured the German commander asked them, “where are the rest?” So they started laughing because they told him they were it.
After that one is “Soldier of Three Armies.” Finish guy, Lauri Törni was his name. He started out in Finland, of course, fighting against the Soviet Union during the Winter War. Then he switched, because he thought his country was ass-raped over the peace treaty with Russia. So he goes over and joins the SS because it means he can keep fighting the Soviets. After World War II is over he ends up in prison, but then later pardoned. He then goes to America, and changes his name to Larry Thorne. He’s buried in Arlington Memorial after he died in Viet Nam as a Green Beret, special operations officer. So he’s one of the few guys who achieved officer status and awarded with medals in three different countries. I guess soldier was the right profession for him.
“Far From the Fame” is next. This one’s about a Czech fighter pilot, Karel Janoušek, although he didn’t fight as much as he arranged the whole possibility of a Czech air force. He moved to the UK and became the first and only air marshal in the Czech air force at all. But he made it possible for several, several units to keep on fighting. There were other countries fighting under the Queen as well, but among the best fighter pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain were the Czech and the Polish ones. They weren’t even invited to the victory parade because they were Czech or Polish. In those times it was natural, I mean they were considered second-class citizens so the UK thought, “why should we have them?” I don’t blame England for that at all because that was how everyone reasoned back in those days. This one’s kind of close to my heart because my mother is from the Czech Republic and you can’t find too many fighting heroes from the Czech Republic especially because many didn’t even have the chance to fight. Back in 1938 before the war even started Germany came in and said, “We have to save our German brothers who live in the Czech Republic, so now it belongs to Germany.” Not much you can do about that.
The last one is “Hearts of Iron.” Some think it’s a bit controversial because it’s a song on an album called Heroes about a German general. His name was Walter Wenck and he was Hilter’s last hope in the battle of Berlin. He had orders to basically defeat the Russians. Walter knew this just wasn’t going to happen. He knew this was over so he said to his aids and to his troops, “Guys this is not about the Reich anymore, this is not about Berlin either, it’s about saving people. This thing we are doing now is not a battle, it’s a humanitarian operation and we need to get as many people out as possible. On this side of Berlin is the Soviet Union and they are killing, raping, and plundering. We probably deserve it”...because some of the Germans were really fucking assholes when they traveled east, but “the people of Berlin should not have to pay.” So he actually made a corridor throughout the city, and almost a quarter of a million men, women, and civilians made it out, and could cross over the Elbe River and surrender to the Americans. In a little bit of a sick twist the final hero of our album is a hero from the wrong side, and a general at that.
Metal Exiles: Sabaton has been fortunate enough to play many venues across the globe, including historic sites, a Sabaton cruise ship, and even a spinning class in Sweden. What goals do you still have for the band, such as locations, historic sites, touring partners, etc?
Joakim: It’s basically still children’s ideas. I mean I’ve never been to Japan. I want to go there, I want to see it, I want to play there...the culture, the history, but the biggest dream show is the 6th of June. It should have been this year, 2014, but we’re not big enough in France to do it. But we want to put on a show on Omaha Beach, where D-Day happened. We want to have a stage on the German boundaries, and have the crowd come in from the sea and go to the stage the way the soldiers went ashore. I want to do that someday...I don’t know how, but I want to fucking make it happen before I die.
Metal Exiles: Sounds like a good dream, man. And one that really could happen someday. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, Joakim. The new album is killer, and best of luck to you guys on tour.
Joakim: Thanks! Take care.
Heroes will be released via Nuclear Blast Records on May 16, 2014.
Watch the official lyric video for “To Hell And Back”
WATCH The Story of Heroes – Chapter I
Purchase Tickets for the Worldwide Plagues Tour North America
