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Music: Sabaton
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 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

Sabaton and their songs provides examples of:

  • 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.
  • 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.
    • In fact nearly every track on the album opens with a woman reading excerpts The Art of War.
  • 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 except when they're outnumbered, which is still factual.
  • Badass Boast: Carolus Rex is this for King Charles XII of Sweden.
  • 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” most likely means “I Destroy Tyranny”
    • Gratuitous Latin: Painful for those who have studied the language. "Denique Interimo" is possibly the only correct Latin statement that they use. They do not properly agree nouns and adjectives (Primo Victoria should be Prima Victoria, or as in its usage in the lyrics, Primam Victoriam). It's an Epic Fail of noun-adjective agreement. Their Latin is more or less lifted painfully from shoddy online translators. Such a shame that they get every other language almost flawlessly right. Suffice to say John Cleese would have a field day with their lyrics.
    • 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.
      • Not to mention, the aforementioned Ruina Imperii is the only song on the album that doesn't have an English version, not counting bonus tracks.
      • The "chanting" in The Carolean's Prayer is the Lord's Prayer in Swedish.
    • 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.
  • The Caligula: Saddam Hussein in Reign of Terror
    • Special mentions go to the lines "Merciless killing your own" "A slave to power- a slave to gold. Ruinous rule in the East."
  • Cold Sniper: White Death.
  • 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.
  • Dark Reprise: While the lyrics certainly do not reflect it, Ruina Imperii is this to Lion From The North, both when you notice that the chorus of the first is more or less a very downtrodden version of the other, and that while Lion From The North covers the rise of the Swedish empire, Ruina Imperii covers its fall.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Death Is Dramatic: One of their few non-history based songs, "The Hammer Has Fallen" is told from the perspective of a man Dying Alone. It is very dramatic.
    Here I am standing, darkness all around
    Thinking of past, taking my last breath, the air is cold as ice
    No one close to hear my voice
    Did not leave me with a choice
    Heaven will you wait for me?
  • 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,
    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,
    That's the Art of War!
  • Digital Piracy Is Evil: Spoofed in "A Secret" from The Art Of War, which always plays no matter how the album was acquired, its format, or where it is being played.
  • Dying Alone: The Hammer has Fallen
  • 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.
  • Götterdämmerung: 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.
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: The Hammer has Fallen
  • 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.
  • The Kingdom: Sweden in the album Carolus Rex.
  • 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.
    • Saboteurs is about the Norwegian resistance fighters sent to destroy the Telemark heavy-water plant.
  • 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.
    • In The Army Now is a badass ballad about a poor sod who gets suckered into joining the military, and it is nothing like what he expected.
  • Mood Whiplash: The album Carolus Rex goes through this at two points. The first, when after thr 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 and Ruina Imperii - mournful cries about the death of Swedish glory.
  • Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Panzerkampf.
  • Nazi Germany: Rise of Evil covers the transformation of the Weimar Republic into this.
  • Nuke 'em: ''Nuclear Attack'
  • Number of the Beast: Played for Laughs by "A Secret" which contains a part that says that it has detected an illegal download and is executing spyware protocol 666. Note that 666 is spelled out at "Six hundred sixty-six."
  • 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."
  • Rape, Pillage, and Burn: 1648
  • Rated M for Manly: 90% of their songs are about war and conflict, after all.
  • Recruiters Always Lie: In "In The Army Now", the recruiter says that Army doesn't do much except stay in bed, and that the recruit will be a hero to the neighborhood. Nothing like it happens; he's thrust into a war and nobody really cares about him.
  • 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.
    • 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.
  • Snow Means Death: Ruina Imperii, covering the Carolean Death March and the fall of the Swedish empire.
  • 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, Mötley Crüe, Wasp, Pink Floyd and a few others.
  • Tank Goodness: Several times, with Panzer Battalion probably the best case of Tank Porn outside of the Imperial Guard.
  • Thirty Years' War: The subject of the first half of Carolus Rex.
  • Title Drop: Aside from “Metalizer”, evetry song that shares a title with their albums has one. Multiple other songs too.
  • Trolling Creator: Their song "A Secret" from The Art Of War begins with another excerpt from The Art of War, but a short time later plays a computerized voice speaking in English that an illegal download has been detected and that spyware is to be activated. This happens on all versions of the album, which makes it particularly funny when it happens on a Compact Disk being played in a Walkman.
    • Exact Words: "Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving to the victory which is decided in a single day." Several silent seconds later: "Illegal download detected, executing spyware protocol 666" It's pronounced as "six hundred Sixty-Six"
  • Up to Eleven: The level of Bad Ass 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 terrorists. Or religious fanatics in general.
    • 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. It's quite powerful.
    • The English version of A Lifetime of War is about how both sides o 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...
  • Villain Protagonist: Birds of War
  • The War on Terror: "In The Name Of God".
  • War Is Glorious: A majority of their songs about World War II 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 II: One of their common themes, as many battles they sing about took place in that time period.


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alternative title(s): Sabaton
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