Sabaton

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Badass men, badass music

Sabaton is a Swedish Power Metal band founded in 1999. Most of their songs touch on themes of war, often being about famous historical battles, especially from World War II.

Current^[when?] line up:

• Joakim Brodén – vocals
• Pär Sundström – bass
• Chris Rörland — guitar
• Thobbe Englund - guitar
• Robban Bäck — drums

Former members:

• Rikard Sundén – guitar (1999-2012)
• Oskar Montelius – guitar (1999-2012)
• Richard Larsson — drums (1999-2001)
• Daniel Mullback – drums (2001-2012)
• Daniel Mÿhr – keyboards (2005-2012)

Albums:

• Primo Victoria – 2005
• Attero Dominatus – 2006
• Metalizer – 2007
• The Art of War – 2008
• Coat of Arms – 2010
• Carolus Rex - 2012
• Heroes - 2014
• The Last Stand - 2016

Sabaton provides examples of the following tropes:

• The Ace: "White Death"
• Ace Pilot: "Aces in Exile"
• A Father to His Men: King Charles XII is painted this way in some of the later songs in Carolus Rex.
  • The quote from Sun Tzu that opens Union (Slopes of St. Benedict) is about being this:

Regard your soldiers as your children and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. Look upon them as your own beloved sons and they will stand by you, even unto death.

• Arab-Israeli Conflict: Counterstrike is about the Six-Day War specifically, also doubles as Israelis With Infrared Missiles.
• The Art of War: The album of the same title is strongly inspired by the work of Sun Tzu, and the titular song is all about it and includes an excerpt or two in the song.
• Badass Army: The Carolean's Prayer paints the soldiers under Charles XII as this, which is Truth in Television. hell, the whole album has the Swedes being total badasses and winning unless when they're outnumbered, which is still factual.
• Badass Boast: Carolus Rex is this for King Charles XII of Sweden.
  • From 40:1:

No army may enter that land That is protected by Polish hand; Unless you are 40 to 1, Your force will soon be undone.

• Badass Creed: One of the final and most epic parts of Long Live the King.

For their honor! For their glory! For the men that fought and bled! A soldier of Sweden remembers the dead!

• Band of Brothers: Union (Slopes of St. Benedict) is really more about this than the Battle of Monte Cassino.
  • The Carolean's Prayers paints the entire army of Charles XII as this.
• Bilingual Bonus: Attero Dominatus uses four words in Latin. “Attero Dominatus” can mean either “Destroy Tyranny” or “Destruction Rules” depending on who you ask, “Denique Interimo” means possibly “Kill at last”.
  • Gratuitous Latin: "Denique Interimo" is the the only one of those that is, maybe, gramatically correct, meaning "I finally kill". "Primo Victoria" pairs a masculine of neutral adjective with a female noun, and probably mixes up the cases as well. "Attero dominatus" could theoretically be correct if it were intended to mean "I destroy tyrannies", but even then the pronounciation would be off (the stress would have to be on the final syllable, sounding roughly like "ooze" but with a sharp s). Suffice to say John Cleese would have a field day with their lyrics.
    • "Primo Victoria" might be fine; it's only grammatically incorrect if you're forcing it to mean "First Victory." It could be an adverb with a nominative noun (and an understood "est" if you like), in which case it would mean something like "At first, victory" or "There is victory in the beginning."
  • And Uprising has one sentence in Polish - “Warszawo walcz!” which means “Warsaw fight!” (imperative, i.e. commanding the city to fight - which it did.)
    • They constantly use German throught most WW 2 themed songs, although mostly basic terms everyone knows like "Panzer" (using the entire word "Panzerkampfwagen" in Screaming Eagles). In Rise of Evil, which themes Hitler's uprising to power and the development of Nazi Germany, they use words like 'Anschluss' (the annexing of Austria), and 'Lebensraum' (the initial, official motivation for the war). There is also a cover song of Warlock's Für Immer, which is, apart from a bit in the chorus, entirely German. And it is glorious!
  • "Gott Mit Uns." It's German for "God With Us," and was used a lot in the Thirty Years War.
  • Carolus Rex in general has a lot of this, with song titles like Gott Mit Uns and Ruina Imperii and whole lines in some songs being in Old Swedish. Plus, there is a Swedish Version of the whole album.
  • And they covered Feuer Frei.
• British Frozen Rocks with Penguins and Landmines: Back in Control is about The Falklands War.
• Cameo: Actor Peter Stormare and Polish general Waldemar Skrzypczak took a part in making the video for Uprising playing respectively commander of German occupying forces and one of Warshaw Uprising's leaders.
• Cold Sniper: White Death, also The Hammer Has Fallen.
• Concept Album: Carolus Rex is entirely about the rise and fall of the Swedish Empire from the Thirty Years War to the Great Northern War.
• Commie Land: Panzerkampf.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Some of their songs, notably Reign of Terror and Wolfpack, are about these.
  • Killing Ground is this for the Swedes towards the Russians. The next song on the album, Poltava, reverses their positions.
• Dawn of an Era: Lion From The North is about the beginnings of the Swedish Empire under Gustavus II Adolphus. It's very hopeful and energetic. And later...
• Death From Above: Firestorm, also Nuclear Attack. Firestorm even drops the trope name:

Burn! Burn! Rage of the heavens, Burn! Burn! Death from above, Die! Die! Merciless killing, Burn! Burn! Death from above.

• Defensive Feint Trap: The Art of War describes this tactic pretty well.

I will run, they will hunt me in vain, I will hide, they’ll be searching, I’ll regroup, feign retreat, they’ll pursue, Coup de grace, I will win but never fight, That's the Art of War! They will find me no more, I'll be gone, I will have them surrounded, They will yield without fight, overrun, Coup de grace, I will win but never fight, That's the Art of War!

• The Empire: The Holy Roman Empire and Russia all throughout Carolus Rex. Your Mileage May Vary as to whether that applies in Real Life.
• End of an Age: The general theme of Long Live The King and Ruina Imperii about the fall of the Swedish Empire.
• Ghostapo - While Ghost Division is named after the actual nickname of the 7th Panzer Division, the lyrics of the song give the division a supernatural edge by portraying them as a division of both live and Undead soldiers fed by the fear the Nazis generate.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: "Aces in Exile" is about the air forces of various nations who fought in the Battle of Britain.
• Good Name for A Rock Band: A sabaton is the metal shoe in a suit of armor.
• Gotterdammerung: In the bands cover of Amon Amarth's "Twilight of the Thunder God."
• Gulf War: Panzer Battalion is about the US armored divisions during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Reign of Terror is about Saddam, his regime, and the 2nd Gulf War itself.
• Great Northern War: The second half of Carolus Rex is about this.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: A Light in the Black.

When the war has been won, And the march home begins, What awaits has not yet been revealed, What was won? What was lost? Will our deeds be remembered? Are they written in stone or in sand?

• Heavy Meta: Metal Crüe, Metallizer, Metal Machine, Masters Of The World, and Metal Ripper.
  • Metal Crue really takes the cake with its lyrics being composed almost entirely of band names.
    • Metal Machine does the same with song titles, and Metal Ripper uses lyrics samples!
• Heavy Mithril: Shadows is about Nazgul.
  • Many people seriously doubt that Hellrider is about tanks and not really a certain demonic biker, especially since it really suits him.
  • Birds of War seems to be about Chaos Raptors.
• Horrible History Metal: They live by this trope. Most of their songs are about historical events.
• "I Am" Song: The song Carolus Rex is this for the titular king.
• It Gets Worse: Carolus Rex goes through this quickly, with the hope and glory in songs like Carolus Rex going quickly to the despairing tones of Poltava, signifying the sudden rise and fall of the Swedish Empire itself.
• The Juggernaut: Ghost Division

They are the panzer elite, Born to compete, Never retreat. (Ghost Division) Living or dead, Always ahead, Fed by your dread.

• La Résistance: Uprising is a song about the Warsaw Uprising, praising Polish resistance.

From the underground, rose a hope of freedom as a whisper. City in despair, but they never lost their faith. Women, men and children fight, they were dying side by side. And the blood they shed upon the streets, was a sacrifice willingly paid.

• • Coat Of Arms paints the whole Greek nation as this. Considering how tough the Greeks resisted the Axis in real life, this isn't far off.
• Last Stand: 40:1 is about a Polish force of some 700-800 men who fought the Battle of Wizna, a Delaying Action against the Blitzkrieg. They held back more than 40,000 Wehrmacht troops under General Guderian, including 350 tanks, for three days. The song explicitly compares the Poles to the Spartans at Thermopylae. According to The Other Wiki, 716 of the defenders died, 40 were captured, and a last 40 managed to get away. The ratio in the title is wrong: the odds they faced were actually more like 50 or even 60 to 1.

Baptized in fire, 40 to 1 -- Spirit of Spartans, death and glory; Soldiers of Poland, second to none; Wrath of the Wehrmacht brought to a halt....

• • Unsurprisingly, The Last Stand, about Swiss soldiers guarding The Pope when 20,000+ Hapsburg troops sacked Rome in 1527. Of 189 Guards, 147 died holding off the enemy while the surviving 40-some got His Holiness to relative safety.

For the grace, for the might of our Lord, For the home of the holy, For the faith, for the way of the sword, Gave their lives so boldly

• Lyrical Dissonance: The Final Solution. An awesome metal song... about the horrors of... well, the Holocaust. Specifically Auschwitz. It's almost impossible to not find the song to be an absolutely glorious ballad from a purely musical perspective, but one still feels very guilty for enjoying it. The band no longer plays that song live because they found it unsettling to see the audience cheer and headbang along.
  • Price of A Mile as well... also a catchy, badass, upbeat song about.... the soldiers dying pointless deaths at Passchendaele.
  • Same with We Burn -- catchy, badass song about....the Srebrenica massacre.
  • Long Live The King is a glorious, epic ballad about... the death of the Swedish Empire and the titular King Charles XII, as his soldiers do everything to bring his body back to Sweden.
• Mood Dissonance: The album Carolus Rex goes through this at two points. The first, when after the triumphant and blood-pumping Gott Mit Uns we go into the Tear Jerker ballad A Lifetime At War. The second when after the hopeful tone of The Carolean's Prayer, Carolus Rex and Killing Ground we get the fast-paced yet noticeably down-turn Poltava culminating in Long Live the King a mournful cry about the death of Swedish glory.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Panzerkampf.
• Nazi Germany: Rise of Evil covers the transformation of Weimar Germany into this.
• Nuke'Em: Nuclear Attack.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Wehrmacht, Birds of War, Rise of Evil.
• One-Man Army: White Death.
• Punch Clock Villain: Wehrmacht. The song explores whether or not they were "crazy madmen on a leash or young men who lost their way."
• Rated "M" for Manly
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The main song of their latest album, Carolus Rex, is about King Charles XII of Sweden and his role in the Great Northern War.
  • Can't forget The Lion From The North, which is entirely about King Gustavus II Adolphus, the man who kicked basically all of Europe's ass for a few years.
• Shout-Out
  • Hellrider quotes Kings of Metal by Manowar and Rising Force by Yngwie Malmsteen in the same line.
  • Metal Ripper has the first half of each couplet quoting The Ripper by Judas Priest, Neon Knight by Black Sabbath, Burn in Hell by Twisted Sister and Master of Puppets by Metallica and Perfect Strangers by Deep Purple respectively. Thus making the title a Stealth Pun.
• Song of Song Titles: Metal Machine. It contains shout outs to Iron Maiden, The Kinks, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Manowar, Metallica, Deep Purple, Motley Crue, WASP, Pink Floyd and a few others.
  • Possibly Lou Reed (Metal Machine Music...)
  • Helloween, Accept, Dio, Glenn Danzig and KISS are also in there
• Tank Goodness: Several times, with Panzer Battalion probably the best case of Tank Porn outside of the Imperial Guard.
• The Kingdom: Sweden in the album Carolus Rex.
• Thirty Years' War: The subject of the first half of Carolus Rex.
• Title Drop: Aside from “Metalizer”, every song that shares a title with their albums has one. Multiple other songs too.
• Up to Eleven: The level of Badass goes beyond Rated "M" for Manly in Panzerkampf.

Into the Motherland, The German Army march! Comrades stand side by side, To stop the Nazi charge! Panzers on Russian soil, A thunder in the East! One million men at war, The Soviet wrath unleashed!

• "The Villain Sucks" Song: In The Name of God is one big "The Reason You Suck" Speech to religious fanatics.
  • We Burn, regarding the Yugoslavian genocide, although it's written in first person from the villain`s side.
  • Reign of Terror about Saddam Hussein and his regime.
  • A Lifetime of War is about how both sides of the Thirty Years War only use the lives of their soldiers for their own gain.

By Kings and Queens young men are sent to die in war. Their propaganda speaks, their words been heard before...

• War Is Glorious: A majority of their songs about World War Two are about lionizing the heroes of various nations, especially Poland, Finland and the Soviet Union.
• War Is Hell: Angels Calling and The Price of a Mile. Cliffs of Gallipoli also qualifies.
  • Possibly every song they have and will make about WW 1, because that war was stock full of unreasonable sacrifice for stretches of land you could hike through.
  • A Lifetime Of War provides two different perspectives on the Thirty Years' War. The English lyrics focus on the horror of the war as a whole and the ambitions of the people behind it, while the Swedish lyrics show it all from the eyes of a common Swedish soldier who leaves his friends and family behind to serve his nation with no guarantee if he will ever return alive, or if he will be remembered and mourned.
• Warrior Prince: King Charles XII of Sweden, as per real life.
• World War Two: One of their common themes, as many battles they sing about took place in that time period.