By Andrew Bansal
Swedish power metal band Sabaton have been in successful existence for the past 15 years but have really captured the imagination of American audiences over the past three years, making a strong impression on their first ever tour in these parts in 2011, and never looking back since. Now, they are ready to embark on yet another North American tour as main support to American metal stalwarts Iced Earth, and are also gearing up to release their seventh studio album ‘Heroes’ via Nuclear Blast Records on May 27th. A couple of weeks ago, I had a detailed conversation with singer Joakim Brodén about the new album, upcoming tours, the band’s rise in America, and just about all other things Sabaton. Enjoy the interview below.
Joakim, it’s great to have you on Metal Assault. Before we get into any of the new album and the tour talk, I just wanted to ask you about your last LA show with Iron Maiden. It was one of the best shows LA has ever seen, by a long distance. What was that experience like for you?
Oh, it was quite fun! We never played a show of that size in America before. Obviously we did shows like that when we were touring with Maiden in Europe, but I must say I like your climate much better (laughs).
Of course it is! Have you had a chance to meet any of the Iron Maiden guys while on tour with them?
Well, we’ve run into them and said hi of course, but they’re quite busy boys and they’re generally not at the venue throughout the whole day because they have plenty of stuff to do. But whenever I ran into them, they’ve been really polite and nice.
I think they are pretty much the gold standard when it comes to live metal bands. Do you agree with that, and do you think they’re a band everyone needs to look up to in terms of the live performance aspect?
I do actually think the Maiden guys are a perfect example of a heavy metal band. They are not teenagers anymore and they still do quite a physical, enjoyable heavy metal show. The same goes for AC/DC as well and they still have a lot of energy in their shows. That’s the reason I love doing it myself. I’m always trying to plan ahead, thinking of what has happened and what’s going to happen, but when I’m on stage, it’s only about now. Only that moment exists.
That’s well put. So, talking of your new album ‘Heroes’ which is coming out in May, you’ve done quite a few albums before this and people expect a certain kind of sound from you. I think you’ve lived up to that on this new album but you’ve also done some different things. In your own opinion, what’s the biggest difference on this album?
The biggest difference obviously is that for the first time in many years we have different musicians playing on the album. We have a bunch of new guys joining us in the band. So in that sense, I’d say musicianship-wise it’s quite an improvement, specially on the guitar side, without seeing anything negative about the guys who were in the band before. But we were all teenagers in our town wanting to play metal and we weren’t really the best ones. We kind of taught ourselves how to play as we went along (laughs), and then when we were changing lineups, we actually had a chance to get real, proper professional musicians. So I think the biggest difference. Otherwise, we went to Abyss Studios with Peter Tägtgren as we did before and I wrote the music as before, so I don’t think there’s anything strange. I mean, there’s some musical things going on that people wouldn’t expect but I don’t really want to reveal them before people have actually heard the album (laughs).
The album title ‘Heroes’ and its lyrical themes, does that make it a little bit more anthemic as compared to before? I get that feeling when I listen to it.
Yeah, I guess I never thought about it but when you say it, it sounds true. Even though there are some darker songs in it, there are still some anthemic songs.
You mentioned Peter Tägtgren who produced the album. I’m a big fan of his work and he has worked with a lot of bands, specially out of Europe. What’s it like for you to be working with him and what’s his input in your music?
We’ve been working with him or his brother, or with his people for more or less ten years now. It’s always been either him or his brother helping us with mixing or setting sounds since back in the day when we were starting out. It’s kind of a double-edge sword working with him, because he’s a guy who knows the band, its history and the musical heritage part of it. So in that sense it’s somebody you can really trust. On the other hand, when you disagree, you are disagreeing with a friend (laughs).
This is your seventh album, and you’ve put out all these albums in a ten-year period. That’s really prolific and it almost takes the clock back to the olden days when bands would put out albums so frequently. How have you managed to do that?
Actually I’m quite proud of it. I’m so lucky that my job is also my hobby. When people ask me, “What do you do when you don’t play heavy metal?” I just tell them I write music! (laughs) At this point, we never really go home and we’re always on tour. Of course, I want silence sometimes and I’m not a machine. I really don’t want to hear distorted guitars on the road for seven weeks. But whenever we have one or two days off, I’m sitting by a guitar or a piano and writing music. I think that’s why we can keep this pace, because it’s not like we do a tour and then take six months off to write an album or go for vacation. This process of writing albums or songs is ongoing. We don’t obviously write on the road itself but when we have five days off between festivals, I’m going to write music.
So that means a lot of the music you write is actually done between shows or festivals, then.
Yeah, I don’t write much when I’m on the road but we sometimes have a couple of days break where we go back home or somewhere else, and that’s when I write a lot, actually. On the road I do some writing as well, but it’s only when I catch an idea and it something strikes me. When that happens, I record a rough demo of it with my iPad, iPhone or any other instrument I can grab. But I never take anything any further while on the road and I save all those things for when I get back into a studio to sit down and go through everything to write the songs for pre-production.
But you see so many things while on tour, so many countries, places and people. That must be an automatic inspiration in terms of song material and lyrics.
Yeah, very much, specially lyrically. I don’t think people realize how fucking lucky we are because half of the stories about war that we’ve put out on our latest albums, without our fans telling us about all these things we wouldn’t even have heard of them (laughs).
Right, and the band has been around for so long already, almost 15 years. Do you even realize that? It seems like time has flown by for Sabaton.
(Laughs) Yeah, actually only a few weeks ago we had a meeting in our hometown with some local politicians. One of the guys asked us how long we’ve been playing together. We looked at each other and went, “We’ve been playing together for 15 years now. Fuck! We didn’t even know!” So yeah, time does fly but it’s because we’re having fun. To be honest, the first couple of years weren’t really that good, not in the sense that I hated it but it was really just a struggle. It was tough for us back then and in a sense it’s even tougher these days trying to go somewhere. You’re always caught in Catch 22, because without putting out an album you can’t go on tour, and you can’t make an album if you don’t go on tour. So basically, no matter where you turn, you’re caught in this loop you can’t get out of.
Right, exactly. So, talking of the tour you have coming up in America, you’ll be main support for Iced Earth here through April and May. That should be a good fit. They’re also a heavy metal band with some similar musical elements and lyrical themes.
Yeah, I think putting myself in metalheads’ perspective, this is a package I’d like to see myself, because I never enjoyed these monster tours where you have five different bands from five totally different genres. It’s overly exhausting. I’d rather go and watch one or two bands that I really like and I want to enjoy the whole evening. I don’t really want a two-band beer break in the middle (laughs).
Yeah, that’s why some of the big festivals fail, specially in America. People don’t want to spend that much money to see just one kind of band and it’s unlikely that they would enjoy bands of every genre.
Exactly right. All festivals are trying to get all the big names or all the different music styles and since you have to pay to get those big headliners from every genre, you’re going to have a ticket price of $250 or something. I don’t know what these things cost over there but we’ve got festivals in Sweden which are about almost 300 bucks.
Having said that, if the opportunity presents itself, would you be open to doing those kinds of multi-genre festivals here?
Yeah! I love playing heavy metal, so I’ll handle it exactly the same anyway. I won’t limit myself by refusing to play any kind of show. If people want to come and see us and hear our music, why should I say no just because we think there are too many different kinds of music at the same show? Of course we’d play.
In America, you’ve risen pretty rapidly in recent years. Was it a surprise to you or did you have it all in the grand scheme of things?
Yes and no. It was a surprise in a sense but on the other hand, when we think about it, it wasn’t. The fact is that we’re still about ten times smaller in the US than we are in Europe. A good night in Europe will have 6000 people coming to see us while a good night in the US will have 600 or something like that. It has gone quicker though than it did when we started out in Europe, but on the other hand, the fact that we could go on a decent headline tour of our own a year ago was quite surprising. Our first real release of an album in America was 2010 when we went with Nuclear Blast, and to be honest, when we came over in 2011 and toured with Accept, we had done several hundred shows together. We were not really drinking all that much really as we would during the first few years. We had tons of more experience and we were better musicians. So yeah, you guys are actually lucky about that because you didn’t see us 15 years ago when we were shit (laughs). So it’s a natural thing but it did go faster in a sense because when we started playing, and trust me on this, I’ve seen the videos and it’s no fun (laughs). It’s hilarious that some people actually enjoyed that show.
That’s funny. So we caught you at a good time of your career, then.
Yeah, I think so!
Right, so finally I have one more question for you. Your on-stage personality is very powerful and dynamic, and I think it’s a big part of what Sabaton does as a live band. Where did that come from and how did you get inspired to incorporate that in your performance?
Oh, that’s a good question. I never thought about it at all, actually. I just think I stole a little bit from every good frontman I ever saw (laughs). The first guy I learned most from actually has to be Tobias Sammet from Edguy. I learned a lot from him, how to not fuck up my voice during a show, how to move on stage and speak to a crowd. But he stole quite a few things from Bruce Dickinson (laughs). I never had any plan, and I think it just developed over the years, whether it’s about anything, from a joke I do on stage to the way I move. It’s a matter of trial and error. I try new things sometimes, and if people laugh at a joke, I will tell it again another night and hopefully it will be fun in the next town or country or state. If I tell a really bad joke, I’ll probably never tell it again but at least the crowd got something exclusive that day (laughs). So, I just keep picking up ideas about what works and sometimes I go totally wild and improvise, not knowing really what I’m saying and doing. If that works out, I guess some of it sticks.
Visit Sabaton on the web:
facebook.com/Sabaton
twitter.com/Sabaton
youtube.com/Sabaton
Iced Earth/Sabaton/Revamp North America tour dates:
04/04/14 The Intersection – Grand Rapids, MI
04/05/14 The Rave – Milwaukee, WI
04/06/14 House Of Blues – Chicago, IL
04/07/14 First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
04/09/14 Stage AE – Pittsburgh, PA
04/10/14 Newport Music Hall – Columbus, OH
04/11/14 Agora Theatre – Cleveland, OH
04/12/14 St. Andrew’s Hall – Detroit, MI
04/14/14 Phoenix Concert Theatre – Toronto, ON – CANADA
04/15/14 Imperial Theater – Quebec City, QC – CANADA
04/16/14 Corona Theatre – Montreal, QC – CANADA
04/17/14 Trocadero – Philadelphia, PA
04/18/14 Best Buy Theater – New York, NY
04/19/14 The Palladium – Worcester, MA
04/21/14 Empire – West Springfield, VA
04/23/14 The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
04/24/14 House Of Blues – Orlando, FL
04/25/14 Revolution – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
04/26/14 State Theatre – St. Petersburg, FL
04/28/14 Scout Bar – Houston, TX
04/29/14 Trees – Dallas, TX
05/01/14 Club Red – Tempe, AZ
05/02/14 House Of Blues – West Hollywood, CA
05/03/14 Slim’s – San Francisco, CA
05/05/14 Knitting Factory – Spokane, WA
05/06/14 El Corazon – Seattle, WA
05/07/14 The Venue – Vancouver, B.C. – CANADA
05/09/14 The Starlite Room – Edmonton, AB – CANADA
05/10/14 Republik – Calgary, AB – CANADA
05/11/14 Riddell Centre – Regina, SK – CANADA
05/12/14 Park Theatre – Winnipeg, MB – CANADA
05/14/14 The Summit Music Hall – Denver, CO
05/15/14 Sunshine Theater – Albuquerque, NM
05/16/14 Diamond Ballroom – Oklahoma City, OK