YMMV / Sabaton

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Invoked by "Father", which outright asks the listener if Fritz Haber should be considered a sinner or a saint for his actions in the First World War ^*Haber developed chlorine gas and other chemical weapons for Imperial Germany, which laid the foundations of chemical warfare and killed thousands of soldiers in the trenches. He was also responsible for the Haber-Bosch process, which created an efficient, stable means to mass produce fertilizers and prevented starvation for billions of people, though it also provided Germany with a source of explosives for military use.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Arguably, one of the coolest (and most commendable) things about the band is how good they are at bringing attention to obscure, forgotten, or lesser-known parts of history that might come across like something out of an exaggerated Hollywood war movie. An all-female regiment of teenage girls who fly biplanes against the Nazis? Less than 800 Polish infantry holding off a Nazi tank invasion force numbering 40,000 strong, for three days? Nazi forces attempting to besiege a castle being successfully held off by a motley assortment of American GIs, French POWs, Austrian resistance fighters, and deserting Wehrmacht troops? 7000 Germans being forced into retreat by a numerically inferior Russian bayonet charge even after the Russians had suffered a gas attack so devastating that they were literally coughing up bloody flesh and pieces of their own organs as they charged? All real.
• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • According to Pär, Sabaton's label Nuclear Blast thought the band was toast when most of the musicians left due to Creative Differences during the recording of Carolus Rex, to say nothing of them making an album about 17th and 18th century Swedish history instead of their prior bread-and-butter the World Wars. Pär just told them to give him and Joakim a bit of time to get things straightened out, and as it turned out, not only did their professional music career continue pretty much uninterrupted, but the album ultimately went quadruple platinum in Sweden.
  • Joakim has said in several interviews that the other band members thought his idea for an Ennio Morricone Pastiche-inspired song was "crazy", and even he had no idea what it should be about. Then he discovered Audie Murphy, and "To Hell and Back" was the result.
• Applicability:
  • According to Word of God, "Birds of War" isn't about Chaos Space Marines, but just you try explaining that to the fans.
  • There's a cottage industry on YouTube of setting Sabaton songs to homemade music videos taken from anime, movies, and TV shows, many of them having very little to do with the subject of the song.
  • "Angels Calling", "The Price of a Mile", "A Lifetime of War"/"En livstid i krig", "Great War", and "Soldier of Heaven" can all be read more generally than their specific topics as antiwar anthems. "A Lifetime of War" most of all, as it opens with the following lines:
    Two ways to view the world, so similar at times
    Two ways to rule the world, to justify their crimes
    By kings and queens young men are sent to die in war
    Their propaganda speaks those words been heard before
• Awesome Ego: Their portrayal of King Charles XII is that of a man with enough ego to consider himself the divine king of Europe and launch The Great Northern War, but with the chops and military skill to back up his grand boasts — just like the man in real life.
• Broken Base: "Wehrmacht", invoking a deliberate Alternative Character Interpretation on the Wehrmacht soldier: "Crazy madmen on a leash / Or young men who lost their way?". Some fans liked the song fine; others accused it to inappropriately endorse the Clean Wehrmacht Myth, downright accusing the Sabaton of going "full wehraboo".
• Cargo Ship: Joakim likes tanks. According to the fandom, he really, really, really likes tanks.
• Complete Monster: "Uprising": The Nazi officer is glimpsed delivering orders for the execution of 100 Poles for every German, carried out as countless Polish civilians are rounded up and gunned down. Upon the resistance continuing, the officer has the city of Warsaw set ablaze, slaughtering countless innocents and resistance fighters, last seen strolling through the dead and dying while shooting them to ensure no survivors.
• Creepy Awesome: Attack of the Dead Men can fall under this for the awesome portrayal a German force's reaction to a nightmarish event:

  They'll be fighting for their lives
  As their enemy revives
  Russians won't surrender, no
  Striking fear into their foe

• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • Don't call them Nazis. The band hates the Nazis.
  • "The Last Stand" is about the Stand of the Swiss Guard against a mutinous Habsburg army during the sack of Rome in 1527; it is not about The Crusades. Expect to be either laughed at or stomped on if you say anything resembling "Deus vult"^note "God wills it" in Latin, a historical Crusader slogan which has lately been appropriated by white supremacist and/or Christian extremist groups in response to it.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Ultimate Metal Parents" for drummer Hannes van Dahl and his partner Floor Jansen of Nightwish, after they announced she was pregnant with their first child in 2016.
  • The term "Sabaton Effect" has gotten an entry on Urban Dictionary, defined as feeling Patriotic Fervor for countries one is not actually connected to, as a result of exposure to pop culture about their history.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Every time Extra History covers a topic Sabaton made a song about, like D-Day or Great Northern War, you will find people posting lyrics of their songs in the comments and these videos get posted by fans on Sabaton subreddit, so apparently there is an overlap between the fandoms. Reached absolute epic levels during the series involving The Great Northern War, focusing on the life of Charles XII - better known as Carolus Rex - to whom Sabaton dedicated half an album and named the title track after.
  • There's quite a bit of overlap between fans of Sabaton and players of Paradox Interactive's grand strategy games (including several members of the actual studio, which is also based in Sweden). There is even official DLC for Europa Universalis IV and Hearts of Iron IV that adds selected Sabaton songs to the games' soundtracks.
  • There's a lot of overlap between the fandoms of Sabaton and its label-mate Nightwish (whose singer Floor Jansen was a choir member on The Last Stand and is married to Sabaton drummer Hannes Van Dahl). Powerwolf, too, to the point of it becoming a minor meme to wish for a Sabaton/Powerwolf co-headlining tour or for Sabaton to cover Powerwolf songs.
  • Yet more overlap with the TimeGhost World War II community since they began their collaboration on the Sabaton History channel which has Indy Neidell explaining the history behind the music.
  • Surprisingly (or not) there's also quite a bit of overlap with the Girls und Panzer fandom, due to both having many historical references regarding WWII, particularly about tanks.
  • The Azur Lane fandom (mainly the English-speaking part) gets along quite well with the Sabaton fandom, largely due to Sabaton's song about the Bismarck dropping very close to the release of the ship in Azur Lane, resulting on many comments on the ship being lyrics from the song. The Twitter account for the English version of the game using lyrics from the song only amplified this.
  • Fans of Wargaming titles such as World of Tanks and World of Warships are often fans of Sabaton as well, and Sabaton have had several songs appear in Wargaming videos. It doesn't hurt they have a playable unit in World of Tanks: their tank (named "Primo Victoria" after their debut album) is a rare premium that almost never goes on sale, being the first unique 3D camo tank (wearing Joakim's stage armor no less!) that includes voiceovers from Joakim himself.
• Genius Bonus:
  • More like historian bonus, as the more knowledge about history you have, the more events referenced in their songs you're gonna understand. This pretty much encourages the listener to do a lot of research. A sabaton, by the way, is the metal shoe in a suit of armor.
  • The melody of "Hearts of Iron" is heavily inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3.
  • The melody of "Livgardet" is based on an old Scandinavian hymn, "Härlig är Jorden".
  • The guitar solo of their Cover Version of Radio Tapok's "Defence of Moscow" includes a few bars from the Soviet national anthem.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Sabaton is especially popular in many countries they've written songs about whose exploits in the world wars are not often taught in school.
  • Poland. Thanks to "40:1", they've found their way into mainstream news and do concerts in museums. Here's the Aesop: when you're a dabbling metaller, and want to quickly and surely gain some notoriety, make a song about brave Polish people. This has only increased with the later songs "Uprising", "Inmate 4859", and "Winged Hussars". The Archbishop of Gdansk gave them a Polish officer's saber as a gift, and a city gave them a collection of Polish eagle badges.
  • Also in Russia, thanks to "Stalingrad", "Panzerkampf" and "Attero Dominatus" and in Brazil due to "Smoking Snakes" recently", to the point that it's often lampshaded by Brazilians themselves that Sabaton brings up something that should be taught in classes and just isn't.^note It's not just Brazil that the lampshading. Many Americans didn't know about the Charlie Brown-Franz Stigler incident until No Bullets Fly came out.
    • Specifically, they are incredibly popular among members of Russian imageboards, and their music created a few very bizarre Memetic Mutations, like Copypastas about gaining superpowers through listening to Sabaton or jokes about the current conflict in Ukraine being organized by Sabaton because they ran out of wars to sing about.
    • "Smoking Snakes" has been covered by Brazilian Army orchestras.[1][2]
  • The band was presented with a medal of appreciation by the Czech Air Force at the start of the Great Tour in Prague, in reference to "Aces in Exile" and "Far from the Fame" calling attention to Czech military aviation history. Also the Czech national singing competition Cesky slavik had to make an Obvious Rule Patch to remove Joakim after he came in fifth place one year (his mother escaped to Sweden during the communist era).
• Growing the Beard: Primo Victoria was when Sabaton started focusing on war and history, and coincidentally was when they really hit their groove. They had previously recorded Fist for Fight and Metalizer, which were more generic Heavy Mithril albums. They arguably grew a second beard with The Art of War, which in addition to containing their now-customary opening track "Ghost Division", is when their synth-backed Power Metal sound really solidified (the previous albums featured less synth and were still more Traditional Heavy Metal).
• Harsher in Hindsight: The narration in "Versailles," the final song from The War to End All Wars, describes how German resentment over the Treaty of Versailles planted the seeds that led to World War II. The monologue ends with "War will return, sooner than we think." The historical context is clear but many listeners were chilled to the bone by that line given that the album was released only about two weeks after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine began.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Thobbe Englund was one of the replacement guitarists hired by Joakim and Pär when the other musicians, including guitarist Rikard Sundén, left during the recording of Carolus Rex and formed Civil War. In 2021 Rikard Sundén was kicked out of Civil War after being charged with sex crimes, and Thobbe Englund replaced him again.
• Memetic Badass: Anyone that has a song specifically about them tends to become this. See Charles XII, Simo Häyhä, and Manfred von Richthofen^note These three were ALREADY Memetic Badasses before Sabaton made songs about them. The songs just made it even more so for starters.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED!" The opening line of the chorus is usually presented as an Interrupting Meme.
  • Posting a line from a Sabaton song on a relevant Reddit thread or Facebook group will generally result in an entire chain of posts quoting the song. Reddit even has a well-known bot account, u/WaitingToBeTriggered that will start replying lines from songs to any comment resembling one.
  • Joakim likes beer, so it's become a meme in several countries for audiences to chant "another beer, please" or something of that nature at the band in their native language.
    • Noch ein bier?^note German for "Give me another beer". As Joakim explains, he originally said that to a German audience as a joke (he speaks very little German although he can pronounce just fine), and it became a Catchphrase in the German fandom. The band has even occasionally performed a song called "Noch ein bier" (to the tune of their own "Gott Mit Uns").
    • Ditto "Jeszcze jedno piwo, proszę" in Polish. It happens about three times on Swedish Empire Live, filmed at Woodstock Festival Poland.
  • Broek uit op je hoofd!^note Dutch for "Take your pants off and put them on your head!", from a fairly obscure party song. Somebody in an audience at a 2015 show in Tilburg (or in Amsterdam, reports vary) started shouting this at the band for no apparent reason, and Joakim went ahead and did it at the end of the set. He now rarely finishes a show in the Netherlands with his pants on.
  • Joakim's habit of beating on his right leg between song lines became a Fountain of Memes shortly after the release of the video for "Bismarck".
  • After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, many either posted rewritten versions of their songs with lyrics pertaining to the invasion or joked that the band would be watching the conflict for song inspiration.
  • There's a number of Youtube videos of the opening line of "Ghost Division's" chorus "They are the Panzer elite, born to compete, never retreat!" being played over clips of tanks either performing stunts or being involved in Epic Fails.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Counterstrike is about the Six Day War (1967), told from the perspective of Israel. It's stated to be a crowd pleaser when it plays there.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • There's potential for that, since many songs appear to glorify war and are often told from the perspective of the traditionally "evil" side (Nazi Germany in particular). "Wehrmacht" deals quite maturely with its subject matter (basically asking whether the army of the Reich was Just Following Orders or Ax-Crazy, and seeming to settle on "a little bit of both"), and songs such as "Ghost Division" concentrate on praising the proficiency of the German military. The band itself says war is simply a good source of stories. (That said, more recent interviews and comments do seem to show that Joakim and Pär are not unaware of how certain songs might be taken, and don't use them on tour and whatnot anymore.)
  • "The Last Stand", a song about the Swiss Guards' defence of the Pope during the 1527 Sacking of Rome by (Protestant) troops from Germany, has sometimes been misinterpreted as a song about the Crusades (the lyrics for the verses aren't as intelligible as the less-specific chorus). This wouldn't be so much of a problem if Islamophobes didn't adapt this song as one of their anthems. The band's mainstream fandom tends to treat this as either a joke or a Fandom-Enraging Misconception. It doesn't help that a fanmade music video with over 16 million views sets the song to footage of a recreation of the Third Crusade, likely adding to the confusion.
  • Part of the problem that doesn't help this phenomenon is that a decent few of their "Newbie Boom" songs in The New '10s were ones that were Wehrmacht-focused, which had the potential of attracting, shall we say, a certain kind of individual who might get the wrong idea about the band's beliefs if they just listened to those particular songs. "Bismarck" is one of the most recent, and bigger, examples of this phenomenon. (Of course, a lot of fascist-sympathizing "Wehraboos" tend to run off when they actually encounter Joakim's opinions on the Nazi Party, fascism, and Hitler.)
• Moment of Awesome: With each album the number of awesome moments in World War Two they haven't dedicated a song to decreases.
  • The Last Stand is notable, as it's about grand last stands throughout history. Ranging from the most famous to the most obscure. And of these grand last stands, several of them were successful. Specifically: "Blood of Bannockburn"^note The Battle of Bannockburn where the Scottish won a decisive victory against the English, "Rorke's Drift"^note The Battle of Rorke's Drift, where around 141 British soldiers held off five thousand Zulus, "Winged Hussars"^note The Battle of Vienna, where it looked grim for the defenders against the Ottoman Empire... THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED!, and "The Last Battle"^note The Battle for Castle Itter, where troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr., a number of Wehrmacht soldiers, a Waffen SS officer who defected, and recently freed French POWs defended Castle Itter against an attacking force from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division until relief from the American 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division of XXI Corps arrived.
• Music to Invade Poland to: Sabaton get this a lot. They make bombastic power metal, their vocalist rolls his Rs in a very particular way, and most of their songs are about WW I and II, quite a few of them from the perspective of German forces. Disregard that they have several songs from the perspective of the nations fighting against Nazi Germany as well as definite anti-war anthems ("Angels Calling", "The Price of a Mile", "A Lifetime of War"), and that their eight minute epic about the Nazis' rise to power is called "Rise of Evil". "Music to Defend Poland to" would be a more apt description, considering their Polish fanbase and songs like "40:1", "Uprising'' and "Inmate 4859".
  • Joakim Brodén has in interview called the attempts to connect Sabaton's music to Nazi ideology "bullshit" and has questioned why no-one applied the same reasoning to film and asked if Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino were closet Nazis after portraying sympathetic Nazis in Saving Private Ryan and Inglourious Basterds respectively. Case in point: In August 2013 the band were forced to cancel a show in Russia...because a Russian politician thought they were Nazis who intended to desecrate a Russian flag during their concert. This is especially ironic considering the existence of "Panzerkampf" and "Night Witches", both of which are about the Soviets defending Russia.
• Newbie Boom: Quite a few occurred in The New '10s:
  • Carolus Rex went quadruple platinum in Sweden and gold in Poland, and all of their albums from Heroes on have reached the top half of the Billboard 200 in the United States (The Great War peaked at #42, their highest position yet).
  • Their crossover with World of Tanks introduced a ton of people to the band.
  • Also, their appearance on The Great War introduced them to literal millions of new fans.
  • "Bismarck", the single they made in collaboration with World of Warships, also introduced a new wave of people to the band, including, funnily enough, a number of Azur Lane fans, as there's quite a bit of fan crossover with WoWS and AL, and the song got released about a month ahead of Bismarck himself^note contrary to usual naval convention, the Germans always referred to Schlachtschiff Bismarck with masculine pronouns entering the game for the game's overall second anniversary, coinciding with the anniversary of the Battle of Denmark Strait.
• Signature Song:
  • "The Last Stand": every one of their videos on Nuclear Blast Records, their record label, ends with the chorus.
  • They've opened almost every concert since The Art of War came out with its catchy, pulse-pounding opening track "Ghost Division".
  • "Primo Victoria". If it's not the closing number in a concert, it's pretty close, usually second-to-last. The band also encourages people to jump and sing along with the song.
  • For the Polish fanbase, "40:1" and "Uprising", both being about the Poles' fierce resistance to the Nazis during World War II. Alternatively, "Winged Hussars".
  • "Bismarck" is somehow close to becoming this as well, outside of their album-based songs, primarily due to the effects of the Newbie Boom entry above. As of March 2023, the video for the song is the band's most viewed at approximately 85.3 Million.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The instrumental of "Shotgun" sounds like something which could have been featured on the OST of one of the Doom games.^note Ironically, the lyrics are about a shotgun-wielding Villain Protagonist who serves the Devil (basically, an Evil Counterpart of the Doom protagonist)
  • "Devil Dogs" from "The Great War", sounds suspiciously similar, both in sound and in theme, to Sabaton's own "Smoking Snakes": both songs are about a group of non-European elite soldiers fighting in an European war, and you may be excused if listening to the beginning of one immediately makes you think of the other.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: Learning the history of epic battles and sieges throughout human history, by way of power metal? YES.
• Unexpected Character: Yarnhub's story video for "Christmas Truce" has a couple shots of a German soldier with a toothbrush mustache (clearly meant to be Adolf Hitler) trying to tattle on the truce to the generals before being hit in the head with a stray soccer ball, then grumpily observing the proceedings from the sidelines.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • The band emphasizes in interviews that they're history geeks and storytellers, not militarist advocates and certainly not neo-Nazis, no matter what certain Russian politicians may think. Listening carefully to the music bears this out: even when they sing from the World War II German perspective, the Nazis are Always Chaotic Evil and even ordinary Wehrmacht personnel are only unambiguously "the good guys" when they're defying or outright fighting against them.
  • They also decided after Attero Dominatus to take an explicitly neutral (but firmly anti-war) stance regarding current conflicts, choosing not to try to write songs on recent topics until historians have had a chance to properly weigh in and separate fact from propaganda.

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