SABATON
Sabaton: There was a competiton through Metallica magazine and we will have a very special guest today doing a very special song. I don’t want to give away any surprises keep your ears tuned for our show, it will be something unique that we have never done before.
Why is history very important in your music?
Sabaton: Well it’s pretty easy for us look at history. People have been killing each other for centuries or millennium, people have made sacrifices and lost their lives and people are forgetting about these stories. So why should we make up new stories? The ones who acutely made the sacrifice are being forgotten, no matter which country they fought for. I think it’s pretty important what’s behind us so we can avoid the same stuff happening in the future.
How do you choose your subjects and what is your process when you write a song?
Sabaton: We have a lot of ideas and we have been sent in ideas since 2010. Since we did the Cult of Arms album, we asked the fans to send in ideas. We have received well over 10 thousand ideas, we have enough to write a lot of material and they are all categorised. So at a later time we can pick them up when we see its fit to an album. When we get enough material for our music ready we start to plan for what kind of themes we will have on the album. We then decide upon a topic then we go to the library and find enough stuff to write about because people have been sadly killing each other for a very long time and there is no shortage of material for us.
Would you ever tour with the band Civil War because they have some of your ex-members in it?
Sabaton: I would still tour with them as they are still friends but I think when it comes to the American Civil War, I think it was pretty well covered by Iced Earth and it belongs to America in that sense so until some war pass there are enough wars for us to sing about anyway.
Can you learn history from listening to Sabaton?
Sabaton: Yes, you can a lot of people have over the years we have had a lot of people emails from people especially people working in schools from teachers and students teachers saying its inspired them to teach their children in a easier way or kids to pass their tests in an easier way.
As we talk about historical figures I would like to ask you for your tips for lecture for some late and inspirational figures which you will like to write about in the future.
There are so many in history, we are talking about everyone from Alexander the great to Napoleon, but talking about these giants you can’t really write a song about those. If we are talking about big campaigns we need a whole album. I can’t really say what’s next for us because we have a lot of ideas if what we are going to do but in the end its the music that decides so when we have all the ideas lined up we start writing the music where is the music going and where the music takes us that’s what we will sing about so we don’t even know yet.
Last time you told me you could write an album?
Sabaton: Big people like Alexander the great or Napoleon deserve a few songs or an album but as I said its where the music takes us, we have a lot of ideas for albums I think we are always bouncing 5 or 6 ideas in the end which one of them in reality is going to be decided by the music for The Last Stand we had a totally different idea from the beginning and only 3 months before we recorded it. We changed into Last Stance because the music wasn’t speaking the same language so we never know.
Are you going to evolve your stage show?
Sabaton: We have a lot of ideas on how to evolve our stage show as we like to have theme that are nice or visual. We have a lot of ideas for the future. You have seen a few of our ideas, and seen a bit of what we can do on stage. In the future we plan on doing a lot more with our stage show.
How was last time you played at Hellfest and how do you think tonight will go?
Sabaton: Last time was a lot of fun, we had the best support band ever Iron Maiden was playing before us, for some reason, that was amazing. I have a very high hopes for tonight we have sunshine, have metal a few beers so how hard can it be?
What's your point of view on history?
Sabaton: History normally contains two different sides and sometimes when we write songs it’s easy to upset some people. We have to pick a side when we write the songs it doesn’t represent us it represents the way we were told the story and that’s how we retell it. There’s also a lot of different places to get the facts from, some of them are never facts, they are just ideas. In later warfare if we stay to the last 100 years it’s much better documented, when we went back 300 years to write about our own history Carolus Rex album it became way more difficult, as at this time not so much was written down by the victors or the kings to make themselves look better not by individual soldiers at the front of the battle
Question for the new guy how do you feel playing for the band?
Sabaton: It feels great for me. It’s a honour to play in this band I’ve been a fan of Sabaton since I saw them live in 2005. I’ve known the guys for a couple of years and they are good guys they play good music and it’s a honour to stand on the same stage as them.
Will you be coming back to Paris next year?
Sabaton: We just finished a big European tour earlier this year, for the current time we don’t have more shows in France. We enjoy it here and you haven’t seen the last of us.
What was it like playing with Accept?
Sabaton: I don’t care who the headliner is and who’s the support. I do understand that they sell more tickets and albums. Emotionally it’s really strange for us to walk up and go on stage after Balls to the Wall, and these metal classics. We grew up listening to these guys and have an enormous amount of respect for them. It’s not about what you fell sometimes am happy about and I hope they are too.
In your songs you have political engagements can you talk a bit about that?
Sabaton: We tell history from the point of view which we find most interesting, sometimes it’s from the violent aggressors point of view sometimes, it’s from what people can consider the peoples heroes point of view. For us we don’t want to do propaganda if it’s political or religious, we want to deal with facts only and of course we have had when it comes to history there’s always going to be new archaeological finds. So it’s happened to us where we wrote a song where everything was correct historically prior to what people knew 10 years ago. But now new testimony and archaeological finds have come to light and it turns out we weren’t right and no one was right because no one knew. So I guess there’s always a risk singing about this if someone proved we were wrong 15 years from now but at least we try to use all that data available to be as true to history as possible when we write the song.
Is it too early to cover the Balkan wars of the 90s?
Sabaton: We have technically covered it in the song We Burn is regarding that and the genocide going on there it’s a pretty brutal song the song from the point of view of Yugoslavian the other hand I think it’s a bit early but we are getting there.
Your fans always want you to play Swedish Pagans at the beginning of the show why?
Sabaton: I can promise you I will not be playing Swedish pagans tonight
you only talk about war in your songs, can you ever talk about people’s life?
Sabaton: Of course there’s all kind of point of views in history but we decided to talk about the military part after all we play heavy metal and that’s a pretty aggressive music genre and it doesn’t fit with all themes from history this one goes hand in hand very well that’s why we choose it.