War Machine

Celebrating 20 years of Sabaton, the mighty power-metal band from Sweden who built a thriving career singing about World War II bombing campaigns, decorated snipers, legendary battleships, the battle of Thermopylae, and just about all things war

- Jeff Kitts

As Swedish power-metallers Sabaton gear up to celebrate their 20th anniversary in December, bassist Pär Sundström and vocalist/keyboardist/occasional guitarist Joakim Brodén—the group’s two founding members and elder statesmen — can take pride in knowing that the little band they formed in Falun, Sweden, two decades ago has evolved over time into a well-oiled, competition-crushing war machine.

But it wasn’t always that way. Sundström and Brodén know better than anyone that Sabaton has, in the past, been forced to cope with circumstances that might easily have stopped the group in its tracks. The first blow came in 2002, just as the young and excited band was preparing to have its debut album, Metalizer, unleashed upon the power-metal masses. Sabaton delivered the completed album to Underground Symphony, the Italian label they had signed with, and all the label gave the band in return were excused as to why the release date was being pushed back further and further.

“We knew the album wasn’t going to change the world or anything because we certainly weren’t the songwriters that we would become later, but it was our first album and we were young, so we were super excited,” says Sundström on a Skype call from a Sabaton tour stop in Poland. “We received all these explanations about why the album was being delayed and delayed and delayed, and in the end, the label told us, ‘Heavy metal is dead, and we have to wait until it becomes popular again.’ I couldn’t believe it — like, what, were they going to wait for 20 years to release the album? But that was that.”