Interviewing Sabaton For Ideon Antron Online Magazine

 

1) Well, I have to say congrats for your new album, truly dynamic music, how do you feel about that?

We feel fantastic about the new album. It took us a few weeks after the recording until we could really appreciate the album. By far this is the most difficult country to get a grip on which songs that would be most liked by the fans. On the earlier albums we could always choose which songs would make single songs but this one we had difficult with. Also to choose which songs to include in the setlists. Now we try one setlist during the summerfestivals and another during the tour in the autumn.

2) Many of our readers are not familiar with Heavy metal and they do not know much about Sabaton (hopefully this is about to change) can you give us a brief biography - history of your band?

Sabaton were formed as it is today in -99 and since then we have been the same members. In the beginning we had no plan for our sound or such but in 2005 with the release of the album Primo Victoria began with the concept of writing songs about historical events, usually connecterd to war and battles during the 20-century. We have just released our fifth album and this autumn begins the biggest tour we ever done. The last tour was about 160 concerts in 25 countries and this one will be bigger.

3) This is probably the most annoying question but I can not avoid it. How did you came up with the concepts - thematology of your lyrics?

We simply wanted to write songs about things that really matters. Not only about typical heavy metal lyrics but things connected with real life events. And we wanted to write about something that most people can somehow relate to and even if not all people luckely have been in war and I wish that noone ever would have to be we can still relate to it.


4) Do you believe war as a terrible certainty? Something that can not be illuminated from the human course?

War demonstrates the worst in mankind and I wish it never happened, but sometimes it also takes out the best in mankind.

5) I have seen that you have a delicate respect for casualties of war and the victims of history, have you felt difficult to manage the balance when you write your songs?

Its sometimes not so easy to stay completely neutral. But we want to write it from an objective part alternativly we place ourself inside the single soldier, commander or army and sing the song from their point of view. And sometimes we need to make the lyrics more attractive to the heavy metal audience and to fit the songs. I call it to "metalize the history"

6) Lets move on to music. After all these years, do you still feel fan of hard rock - heavy metal music? Is it difficult to be alive in the music industry nowadays?

Ofcourse, I believe that if you are a true fan of metal it will stay with you forever. Its one of the few music genres that has som many generations of fans. We can often see 3 generations of people on our concerts and thats amazing. I am quite sure that I will still love the sound of heavy metal even when I grow old.
I hope we can go on for a long time, some metal musicians can usually keep going quite long.
We shall see how long we can survive, today the music industry is very hard, so many bands compete over the fans and its not usual that the successful bands quit so there always gets more bands.


7) What was the evolution of your music from your first steps as musicians till today?

The biggest evolution since the start is not the music. When we started we focused 100% of the time we spent with the band rehearsing and writing songs. Today the music part is maybe 10% for me. The rest 90% is spent doing the management for the band.

8) Back to the emotions. How do you feel when you are about to have a gig in a place near by that you are describing in your songs? Does this effects you in any way?

Yes, of course. Even if almost all shows are great and really fun some shows can be fantastic in other ways. Some places have special value, to play in our hometown is always special but to play on battlefields that we sing about is the absolutely best experience. The show we did on the battlefield in Wizna in Poland in 2009 infront of 10 000 fans was totally amazing. On the hour it was 70 years after the actual battle.

9) I've seen around a lot of music labels for your music (hard - heavy - epic - progressive), what is the one you that you believe fits the most to your music?  

I simply like to call it heavy metal. Sure the easiest would be to say Powermetal but actually the standard elements of that genre is high pitched vocals and fantasy lyrics. Which is something we dont have anything of in our music.

10) Future plans? A concert in Hellas maybe?

Lots of concerts! We have a big tour coming up. And also the rereleases of our 4 first albums is coming up in the autumn. We really wanted to have a concert in Hellas but nobody dared to book us. We still look for someone who can do concerts with is in Hellas.

11) Please close this interview in the way you want! Thank you very much for your time and patience to answer our questions!

Thank you for showing interest in the band. We are really happy for all chances to do interviews that we can get. We know there are a lot of fans in Hellas that we do not want to dissapoint. So trust us that we really do all we can to book shows.

Band's Website  http://www.sabaton.net/