And now we lie in Flanders fields.
- The two choruses of Cliffs of Gallipoli: 1st and 3rd:How many wasted lives? How many dreams did fade away?
Broken promises, they won't be coming home.
Oh mothers, wipe your tears, your sons will rest a million years.
Found their peace at last as foe turned to friend and forgive.note
- 2nd:There is no enemy, There is no victory,
Only boys who lost their lives in the sand
Young men were sacrificed,
Their names are carved in stone and kept alive
and forever we will honor the memory of them.- The song is from the album The Art of War, which intersperses the songs with quotes from Sun Tzu's classic. The quote for "Cliffs of Gallipoli" is:
There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested.
- The chorus of Light in the BlackWhen the war has been won, and our 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?Leaving home, set to sea
Was this really meant to be?
See the shores of our home fade away.
Facing blood, facing pain,
Have our brothers died in vain?
Many lives has been lost on the way. - A Lifetime Of War is a heartrending ballad about the savage destruction of the Thirty Years' War:Has man gone insane?
A few will remain
Who'll find a way
To live one more day
Through decades of war
It spreads like disease
There's no sign of peace
Religion and greed
Cause millions to bleed
Three decades of war- The Swedish version is even worse, being from the point of view of a common soldier.
För kriget det kan
Förgöra en man
Jag ger mitt liv för mitt fosterland
Men vem saknar mig?
Så se mig som den
En make, en vän
Fader och son
Som aldrig kommer hem
Men vem sörjer mig?
(For war it can
Destroy a man
I gave my life for my homeland
But who will miss me?
So see me as a husband, a friend
A father and son, who never comes home
But who mourns me?) - The Final Solution.When freedom burns
The Final Solution
Dreams fade away and all hope turns to dust
When millions burn
The curtain has fallen
Lost to the world as they perish in flames - Purple Heart. Each and every lyric seems crafted for the sole purpose of making you weep.Once we were soldiers
Once we were young
We have found our peace
We've seen the end
Fallen in war
We belong to history
Fallen in war
Sleep 6 feet below
Heart of the brave
Cannot bring me back to life
Fallen in war
Still brothers in arms - Uprising, about the desperately brave but ultimately doomed Warsaw Uprising:All the streetlights in the city
broken many years ago
Break the curfew, hide in sewers
Warsaw, it's time to rise now! - To Hell and Back seems to be both this and CMOAA man of the 15th, a man of can do
Friends fall around him and yet he came through
Let them fall face down if they must die
Making it easier to say goodbye
- Chorus:Crosses grow on Anzio
Where no soldiers sleep
And where Hell's six feet deep - The last verse:Oh gather 'round me
And listen while I speak
Of a war where Hell is six feet deep
And all along the shore
Where cannons still roar
They're haunting my dreams, they're still there when I sleep!
- The music video for To Hell and Back however falls into full Tearjerker territory, showing not only the trauma of the war itself but also the horror of the drug addiction resulting from attempts to treat PTSD. Especially if you know whom the song is about. Because that's actually what happened to him.
- Inmate 4859 is a song about Witold Pilecki witnessing and trying to fight against the horrors of The Holocaust, and Sabaton depicts the horrors witnessed accordingly. That alone is terrible enough, but the song makes note that Witold Pilecki's heroism did naught to stop him from being unjustly executed by the communist government of Poland.Sent to the prison where the heroes are judged as traitors
Accused of treason by his own
Sentenced by countrymen under pressure of foreign influence
Men he once fought to free- Throughout the song, the chorus' intially ask "Who Knows His Name", reflecting how no one knew of Witold's act of sacrifice for decades due to the strict censorship of the Soviet Occupied Polish government, but as the Cold War ended and much of the information about Witold Pilecki became public, he finally and posthumously earned his title as a Polish national hero, which the final chorus makes very clear.
Inmate in hell or a hero in prison?
Soldier in Auschwitz, We know his name - Hearts Of Iron effectively portrays the utter despair of the German army at the end of World War II.
- Stalingrad is about the utter devastation and horrible losses the Soviets endured to reclaim the city in the bloodiest battle ever known to man.See your friends fall hear them
Pray to the god your country denies
Every man dies alone and when your
Time comes you will know that it's time
Stalin's fortress on fire
Is this madness or hell - The Price of a Mile, which is about the Battle of the Passchendaele, a pointless meatgrinder of a battle that went on for ages and accomplished little beyond turning a pleasant stretch of countryside into a nightmare, and the deaths of half a million young men.''Know that many men has suffered
Know that many men has died
Six miles of ground has been won
Half a million men are gone
And as the men crawled, the general called
And the killing carried on and on
What was the purpose of it all?
What's the price of a mile?'' - Ruina Imperii was never translated into English. It can be argued that it's from the perspective of the men in the aformentioned Death March to bring Carolus Rex's body back to the Fatherland, despite being utterly crushed that their beloved leader has fallen, and with it, their dreams of a Great Swedish Empire.Fränder, bröder, vår stormaktstid är övernote
Vårt rike blöder, fanan står i brandnote
Aldrig, aldrig, aldrig återvändanote
Svea stormaktstid till ända!note - The above just compounds on the song previous to it, Long Live The King, which is about King Carolus' Death and the shattered dream of a Great Swedish Empire.Broken Dreams So Grand
Sing Of His Final Stand
Long Live Carolus
Brought By Soldier's Hand
Back To The Fatherland
Long Live Carolus Rex! - The Hammer Has Fallen, from the album Metalizer. The whole song is essentially the story of a soldier Dying Alone, thinking about everything he's "lost and won" and even considering if he'll go to heaven ("Heaven, will you wait for me?") There's no rocking tune, no epic drumbeats, no cheer and pep- only a sad, mournful instrumental backup that truly hammers in the despair and tragedy of the song. Here's the very first set of lyrics:Here I am standing, darkness all around.
Thinking of past, taken 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?- Made even worse when you think about how many soldiers have died like this. Cold and alone, just thinking about their lives before they perished.
- The track 'Diary of an Unknown Soldier' from 'The Last Stand'. A man suffering from PTSD recounts the desperate fighting in the Argonne Forest by the Lost Battalion:I remember the Argonne, 1918
The sounds of that battle still haunt me to this day
Machine gun fire from enemy lines
The sickening sound of a bayonet tearing through human flesh
The soldier next to me firing his sidearm in desperation
All these sounds still echo in my mind,
And as conducted by Death himself it all comes together as music
A rhythm of death
A symphony of war - The closing song to their 2019 album The Great War is a rendition of Lieutenant-Colonel John Mccrae's famous poem In Flanders Fields. Given the album’s focus on the men who fought in the First World War, it’s a touching yet tearful memorial to those who suffered and died in the so-called war to end all wars.
- One YouTuber pointed out that it is the eleventh track, or 11/11. And what is 11/11 on the calendar? Remembrance Day, where we honor the end of the Great War. Whether or not this was intentional by the band, it's a nice little detail.
- While "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" is largely upbeat for the most part, the song also addresses the less than ideal aftermath of the rebellion, and Lawrence of Arabia's uncertain feelings on the matter, having aided the Arab revolution, but also deceived his allies about England's intentions.After the war has been won, deception or treason?Who can tell?Who stood to gain?Who stood to lose?Who did the dying?The pillars of wisdom can tellThe sands of Arabia calling!
- Shiroyama is equal parts this and awesome, telling of the utterly hopeless final stand of classical Japanese culture:Imperial force defied
Facing 500 Samurai
Surrounded and outnumbered
Sixty to one the sword face the gun
Bushio dignified
It's the last stand of the Samurai!
Surrounded and outnumbered
Until the dawn they hold on
Only forty are left at the end
None alive, none survive Shiroyama! - "Great War" is a truly moving, somber piece about the horrors of World War One, and particularly The Battle of Passchendaele (much like Price of a Mile above). The first and second verses hit hard.Where dead men lies, I'm paralyzed, my brother's eyes are gone
And he shall be buried here, nameless marks his grave
Mother home, get a telegram and shed a tear of grief
Mud and blood, in foreign land, trying to understandWhere is this greatness I've been told?
This is the lies that we've been sold
Is this a worthy sacrifice?I'm standing here, I'm full of fear, with bodies at my feet
Over there in the other trench, bullets wear my name
Lead ahead as the captain said and show them no remorse
Who am I to understand what have I become?- That last part gets more depressing when you realize the narrator's side is never mentioned. If they were from the Central Powers, ultimately their death accomplishes nothing. And since Passchendaele is the primary focus, if it's that battle they died in, even if they're on the Allied side, the most their death will accomplish is six miles of land.
- "Christmas Truce", about the event in the winter of 1914, despite being in great part heartwarming. Both sides putting aside the war for a brief glimpse of peace; the soldiers shake hands, play football, and even erect a wooden cross in No Man's Land. The music video ends on this note, as artillery in the distance (which soon begins to fall among the revelers) forces both sides back into the trenches. The symbolic destruction of the piano used to play the music is the icing on the cake. The final shot of the video is Par holding a candle to the still-standing cross, with the words "Lest We Forget" carved onto it, a rallying cry by soldiers from World War I to never let such a thing happen again. And even more sadly, we all know how that turned out.
- "Soldier of Heaven" manages to transcend its subject matter, being a tribute not only to the Italian and Austrian troops who died in the avalanches of White Friday, but all soldiers who died in war and whose remains were never recovered, whose ghosts will remain there forever.I watched the end of war
I watched the soldiers come and go
And I kept my watch forever
So many brave men fell
in the battles that were waging down below
I have seen it all but none will hear my story - "1916", Sabaton's cover of Motörhead's song. Think for a moment, all of the wars throughout history. How many soldiers do you remember by name? Probably less than 0.001%. Now think about the soldiers of the Great War, how many died, almost pointlessly, with many disappearing into the mud never to be found again. This song in particular was inspired by the Battle of the Somme, perhaps the biggest military loss of life in the British Army's history, with over 57,000 casualties, 19,240 dead, many of them within the first three hours. As Lemmy stated, "Entire towns of North Lancashire and South Yorkshire had an entire generation wiped out." And all that death and destruction resulted in a gain of only six miles.
