 Jimmy K here metal voice look at us the metal voice shirts are now on sale just go to the video description to find out on how you can purchase one metal welcome to the metal voice that are on the show a recurring guest a recurring guest sabbatons the one the only singer of sabbaton we could say that the one constant the Joaquin Broden is it Broden Broden Broden how do you pronounce it I have Broden Broden okay yeah all right like I say it was seems like it was just yesterday we had you on it was actually last august and all I can say is congratulations this is a masterpiece this album thank you to war to end all wars I can't get enough of it uh I've been listening for me this is your operation my crime this is your dark side of the move those are bold words thank you this is an amazing amazing album so let's just get that it's a masterpiece that's the word I will use for this album moving forward the war to end all wars gonna be released on march the fourth via nuclear blast so yes where do we start where do we start here but where do we start world war one back to world war one I mean yeah we thought it's sort of you know our previous album the great war obviously dealt with the same conflict and we when we were doing that album we sort of had two stories well we had several stories we felt when we were leaving behind but two ones we really wanted and those were the christmas truce and the story of the harlem hell fighters and well we didn't have the right music so we thought how we'll do them a lot of the time then because it's better for us at least we figured out that if we don't have the right music or feel feel it at the moment it's better we take it later and that in combination with when we released the great war we got a such an amount of books and emails from fans and friends you know telling our stories have you heard about this and a lot of moments it was like how happened we heard about this you know how did we miss this then of course the pandemic coming in you were supposed to I guess tour on the great war until yeah late 2021 I guess but since we couldn't do that and there were still certain places on this planet we haven't played we thought well if we do another album we can tell some of those stories our fans and friends told us we can get the christmas truce and harlem hell fighters in there and also when we go to let's say latin america australia japan where we didn't get to tour on the great war tour those songs that are from the great war aren't going to feel well irrelevant because they're in the same conflict instead of going to a napoleonic era album which would make right no sense at all to play a song about morons of rygia that you know I'm gonna you know I just want to ask you the first thing like just a little backtrack you were on tour with judas priest right and I just I just have to ask you this question what do you remember when richie faulkner fell we'll get back to the album I just want to know what do you remember like what happened there like what was your you know person I had no I had no idea he fell at all actually because we were out I didn't watch their show I was probably in the dressing room showering or at the hotel where we had the showers for that festival and we came back to the bus when after metallica we're done playing so this is quite a long time after it's supposed to happen and a few of us were drinking and some of judas priest crew came in to our bus even you know asking what happened well and they a few of them said like yeah do you hear about richie like what no he was bad and he had to go with the paramedics that was it we thought okay well we had to go with the paramedics he wasn't feeling good and that's all we knew so we kept on blasting van helen and jumping in the doorbells pretty much and felt like assholes when we woke up the next morning in kansas city and cut the call in that you know you've been 10 an hour 10 and a half hour surgery so now we I think you didn't know until the day after we just interviewed him yesterday he's doing great the doctors are giving him the okay and he's going to be out traveling and touring of course in north america well that's the best news i've heard in a couple months the power of heavy metal saved him literally has the metal god in the back so what else do you need what else do you need the only reason i'm asking you is because you know your tour also you know you went all the way to america it's not like you're in america and you had to like bail too like you had to stop yep we managed to do one final show in denver colorado um because we were already on our way there we had i think a photo session or something lined up as well we had some things to take care of and then we thought like is this really going to be the last show of this tour yeah that's weird so we figured denver has been usually been a good city for us to play in so we thought what would happen if we actually booked a venue and said we're playing in 24 hours that's what we did and yeah the venue filled up and a whole bunch of sabaton fans made it some people even from europe i don't know how they even made it into the us for the travel plan and quarantine but yeah something somebody needs to check your borders you know even europeans coming you know flights are you know walking in to go to heavy metal shelves uh and but they're stopping us from having tanks at the border on the other hand yeah you would you would think you would hold the first mistake we did we wrote it down in this uh chamber of commerce you know uh document with all the list of all your equipment of the serial numbers and everything you need to tell us or the chamber of commerce in sweden so they can tell the chamber of commerce in the us or wherever you're going basically that this is what we're bringing in and out so you're not smuggling stuff and yeah the first time we sort of wrote tank you know that gave us problems now it's tank machine gun uh it's stage stage problem in the shape of hey let's get back to this album i mean it's just too great to talk about you know the whole feeling right from the beginning i guess you i don't know my opera too well but you can call this an overture with uh with sarah yabo and it kind of lays out everything and i love the lord of the rings kind of a lady cat the geradriel get whatever her name geradriel we'll do it on the closer and the opener you know it gives you those uh goosebumps almost right away yeah we tried the bith and bith and dixon dates her name we tried her for the great war history edition and we really loved how it turned out because we always wanted to you know central for us it's not only the music but also telling the stories and sometimes the stories don't come across a lot of times people sort of i like this song what's it about and then they sort of google and try and find out but in a situation where we have the history edition of the album with short narration you know before or after the song sort of setting the scene and getting you into the whole thing it really really helps uh for people to understand especially the first couple of times you're listening yeah because if you hear you know a song and you don't understand and you're not really into military history there's a whole lot of stuff you're gonna miss but if you get that hint it's a great way to get you introduced to the album sort of but the history edition we also have the regular of course not everything is with narration because yeah when you're drinking with friends and having a barbecue you don't want to listen to that you know well i like the way it's all condensed in like four and a half minutes you know the whole beginning of world war one is all condensed in four and a half minutes that's what you got to do that's what you got to do and the whole whole conflict is to condense the two albums well well i mean to alan's point into your point like you have two bookends right you have the beginning and the ending and the beginning is sort of it spells it out what's going on and the ending is sort of like wait a second this might not be over yet you know part two coming right a sequel but i want to say this is what i really appreciated about this album health fighters i found the song like first of all i'm a big world war one buff like i you know i i've read up a lot about world war one and and the craziness of it all but i like health fires and i'll tell you why because you'll plot i'll let you explain it but it's the harlem fighters health fighters right that's sort of the the black americans the minorities who don't have any rights in their own country fighting for a country that they have no rights for or no no equal rights and that's what i really hits home yeah i mean it's like one of those i mean the power of the story the underdog element everybody loves an underdog and this you know in any story and also let's be honest if there ever was a unit that had a perfect name for heavy metal song and health fighters really can't make that up let's really really stay there we're gonna claim it you know but i actually i love how you know coming off of the great war we felt like oh we really wanted that is a great story it's a great story and you know and just to tie it in sorry alan lady of the dark now here's a woman who probably at that time probably did not have the same rights as men right globally but she's you know i yeah i don't think they were voting rights for women in syria at that time depends where you live yeah and i even if even did they even have voting at all that's what i yeah i don't remember yeah yeah but it's interesting how the minorities or the minority the people who are pushed aside in society they were the heroes of the war that's what i'm trying to say yeah in many cases and there are i mean we do go down the rabbit hole with our research sometimes we have held friends who are experts to help us we are we are amateurs after all though we're not historical experts by any means but we are really passionate about it and i think for every album there's like one or two stories we come across um that are really makes us think why isn't there a major hollywood movie about this yeah yeah but in the case of you know certain people it's understandable uh my maybe hollywood has no interest in making a movie about a syrian woman that nobody's ever heard of basically but i think at least maybe does nobody's heard of her so maybe if we tell the story somebody i mean this is not only about us telling the story to gain fame syria what the syrians who are interested in history already know about her this is about telling the rest of the world hopefully hopefully steven spielberg will think it's a great story and tell her story you know well he watches the show so you never know yeah i already said youtube man fun i mean you got you know stormtroopers it's an upbeat song you got that except like chanting in the middle eight and then you know there's a speed quite a quite a quick pace song so that's another i mean every song there's not a weak song in the album well thank you you know what to me will always be the the christmas truth there um the christmas truth that to me like i remember there was a i don't think was it saving private ryan or which movie was it where they actually played that scene out i don't know if you guys ever saw the movie where they actually they actually made a movie of it they made a movie of it where both sides are actually like saving private ryan is one more too so you shouldn't be that yeah yeah sorry erase that wrong wrong sabaton album i i do know they they shall not grow up i don't remember what did the name but i did see it it was a good movie yeah i don't know but that that for me that's you know that's another huge single off the album and you know what i like about it gives you space to breathe it seems like you understand the whole story it's got a hopeful sentiment you can enjoy it and it's uh it just like it breathes well if i can say that in that song yeah thanks it's actually the one of the first songs or the first song written for the album because it was one of the ones we we got to get this right now so a lot of pressure on that one but on the other hand it it's a weird one because it's got a lot of piano a lot of orchestra and i don't know some people picked up but it's not very few but it's actually a waltz you know but you can absolutely dance a waltz to it and so it didn't end up at all like intended but that is sometimes the advantage of knowing exactly the story and how you want to tell it when you set out writing the music because if i would have just sat down and written music i would never have written that song you know in that way but i was just trying to tell a story but lucky yes yeah wow the valley of death what the bulgaria held them back what was the story i didn't get the story on that one what was a quick quick what's the story on that battle or battles of doiran on the all confront british versus bulgarians as you say and i think they came back to british three four times no three times they came back in the fourth the bulgarians weren't there anymore but he was fighting vasov their commander he was considered by the british to fight really honorably so he was actually invited to lecture at some sort of cadet school in the uk after the war so they respected him sort of like yeah you fought you were a good commander you fought honorably and to invite the guy who kicked your ass to lecture is kind of impressive i'd say no yeah and despite the title you know valley of death it's he's kind of an uplifting song you know it's it's a despite the title and it's a great sounding the guitar break the build up everything about that song it's it's kind of uplifting and with a title like the valley of death you think you're right and i never thought about that but for me me and chris when we wrote that we were just realizing maybe there was a bit of alcohol involved that there are why aren't there any guitar hero songs anymore like jakey lee like van halen where you know the guitar takes center place and there's actual riffs and melodies being played in failures and then the guitar is used as a percussion instrument without changing notes sort of carrying harmonies and stuff so we sort of went for that yeah eighties guitar hero era of music that we grew up in love and sort of went with the flow yeah i think a dreadnought dreadnought as well that solo has got that eighties feel so much it's a slower darker song but at the end it kind of picks up again so and i just love the the guitar solo on that one yeah i think tommy did his best solo in sabato on that one so far actually uh he he really picked up on the song you know what i mean sometimes a guitarist goes in and hey this is what i can do motherfucker just go on with it he he has a really good uh what do you call it sends for what the song needs i guess and i mean obviously he could have played blazingly fast all the time but he chose to borrow parts from the melody that's already there in the rhythms from the main riffs where he would borrow the rhythm of the riff from the main riff from the song but play differently that his own notes into the solo it's hugely impressive how we how he incorporated all that you know i think lady of the dark is another fantastic example of the guitar solo just as you explained you know yeah that's what i say it's a much more mature album because of that it seems like like you said the solo every song i have here is great solo great solo great solo great solo i mean great solos on here amazing the keyboard some songs it's in the forefront some it just gives you that nice kind of background feeling yeah we actually worked a lot with the guitars on this album because it was one thing we wanted was to be able to get guitars sorry louder without them being too harsh and when you have too much distortions it's easy for them to sort of take over it's too you know you can't hear them you can't hear them you can't hear them oh no they're too loud all of a sudden and they sort of eat up the whole soundscape so we actually got it heavier by reducing the distortion and changing i mean amp heads and a lot of other things so you will also be outdid yourself from the production on this one which i think helped in the whole sound because i i think mature is a good word for it it sounds more mature the sound of it and also the way Chris and Tommy plays now they've been in the band for a couple of years now they they're a few years older that they were maybe they joined exactly you know they seem more comfortable maybe of course they're guitarists they're always gonna prove themselves you know guitar face off at time from time to time but in a sense it feels like they're more yeah matured a little bit to play play the songs instead of the guitar play do you think world war one was more brutal than world war two because there was a lot there was more hand to hand and more surprises with gas and it was more of a brutal war for for mankind or humanity yeah i think so mainly because i mean it was pretty short we're talking four years here and we went basically from napoleonic era you know horses sabers almost a few armies and units still had those and four years later we see submarines battleships aeroplanes tanks gas being used for the first time so i mean it's really modern warfare growing up and you know at least not maybe the full extent of it but at least we get a hint of what's coming i mean stormtroopers obviously same theory behind it as blitzkrieg yeah yeah yeah so yeah i would say they very dark era but it should be remembered also that at no other time during human history than those four years where they're bigger bigger advances in the medical field yeah with everyone my personal favorites the unkillable soldier i mean you start off with that big like avantasia chorus and chorals and everybody's singing all at once and then you got that galloping guitars and the drums and it blends with the backing vocals and it's it's just so powerful i think that's probably they're all great but i i have to pick one i would probably say that that's the biggest teaser we have as well because both me and the choirs are whispering on the first choruses it's not until the last one we actually go and blast out everything else roll down the volume on the guitars and all the choirs are whispering you know obviously with modern mastering and compression it's not hugely it's it's still a dip in volume but it's not as much as it would have been without it but and also one of the craziest guys ever i've read about it's like a cartoon caricature or a crazy war guy that i don't know but even more will come up with that you know the luckiest man um do you find like we spoke to blaze bailey and he's a big sabaton fan do you find more and more we'll call it legacy metal bands or the older classic metal bands are really now appreciating sabaton and their place in metal the metal world yeah in a sense uh basically because we've gotten larger we're getting large so large that they can we cannot be ignored in a sense in a sense but also people have realized that we're sort of carrying on in many cases that tradition of the classic metal because i mean heavy metal or harder or extreme music in any sense is thriving there's a lot of it but as i touched on before with yeah maybe when i'm talking about valley of death the the old school classic guitar riffs as they were done before the way of stringing melodies together and i mean our roots are basically eighties heavy metal that's what everybody my point is blaze bailey's new album has a bit of sabaton in it so it's it's sort of you know if you've listened to his new album or his last album well you should put it on because okay you could see that there's a nod there's a nod to sabaton and he even acknowledged it i think he did and he said diddy allen i think he did he said yeah there because you know he likes the band so if you like he's a nice guy yeah we did we did a we surprised crashed his uh show in war saw with many years ago six eight years ago maybe uh we were down in war saw for promotion during interviews me and pad and we were also going to a fan club meeting where the fan club was meeting um we found out that blaze bailey was playing the next day and chris is a huge Iron Maiden fan of his we called up chris and said dude what are you doing tomorrow he's like uh nothing so go to fall and pick up all our stage clothes and get your ass on our first plane down to war saw so he actually flew down the early the next morning and we talked to the promoter because the same guy had been uh been putting on shows with us as well and he snuck us in backstage while blaze was playing and then we sort of me chris and pad stormed the stage uh on i can't remember if it was a man on the edge or he was playing a maiden track he just stormed the stage surprised him and then we had a lot to drink i mean we can't finish this interview without talking about soldier of heaven you know it's heavy on the keyboards and it's just too damn catchy not to talk about it it's a great video thanks well it's uh it's a bit of a weird one because i mean if you just take away i mean obviously the drums are regular drums played by hannes except for the toms the same samples yeah they sound samples yeah yeah that's you know all electronic drum samples from the 80s music but other than that it's a sort of an anti-reaction me and chris were writing at a certain point we thought oh there's too much going on all the time you know we need a break let's do something that cannot have a you know complicated guitar if you cannot give a tariff and everything but it cannot be complicated and that sort of became the starting point of the soldier to heaven and i mean in a sense in the beginning we instead of that synthesizer that we use that also in like similar things in shiroyama lost battalion and certain songs but we had a guitar there first and then we thought this song's got a bit of an eighties vibe about the chorus you know i thought there was some kind of meatloaf in the pre-chorus as well i don't know if that's true but i felt it like that and then we just started hmm let's see yes i've got some drum samples here now it's eighties no now we need that and we need a hand clap and then we thought oh you remember those guitars on judo's priest turbo with a tremolo oh we need those in the chorus and we started adding up stuff we had a little fun and that's that's how it happened can anybody whistle can anybody whistle no i can't leave it out leave it out nobody can that's pretty much it um is there anything or or to know or to know again would have you know probably a little jealous about that song because it's something that they sounds like what they're able to do as well you know oh yeah that's a pretty good band they haven't listened too much but they pop up every now and then and every time i'm like hmm this just sounds good i should check these guys out but i still haven't so i don't know i've been too much in the making our own music i don't want to listen to too much other music when we spoke in august you said this album is something special you've played it to all kinds of different people and i fully agree i mean i've been listening to sabbatons all your life but there's something special about this album what is it for you i don't know maybe it's the first time in our career where uh both the sound and things sort of came out the way we wanted it maybe that's what's coming through i don't know i'm not blaming any other producers or any past band members here but i mean maybe it's the experience of us from in the band and also working with you and us and him being able to get the best out of us as a producer you know yeah all right it's well mixed well produced and the songs i mean there's not a week track on the album so what we do every year is we pick what our top albums are of 2022 and i'm telling you right now this is a leading candidate for me for the best album of the year everything i know but i measure everything against this album as far as i'm concerned just it's that strong of an album thank you thank you because it's a thorough thoroughly enjoyable listen and i find it's more of a a grower too like on the first listen you're going okay and then the more you listen to it the more you absorb different parts of it and it is a grower it's and then those are the best albums well thank you i'm happy to hear but i i do know that usually with saboteurs there's i've had so many people tell us over the years that is like i like this and this and this track on the first list and then the five listens you discover not the one and then the hand clap the ones you like falls off you know the hand clap i noticed the hand clap hey all right the war to end all war wars uh march forth nuclear blast viking broden broden no worries i'll stay it's fine broden yeah thank you looking forward to seeing you guys on tour and congratulations on the album thank you very much guys catch you next day bye