Album Review: Sabaton - The War To End All Wars

Sabaton has made a living by bringing stories or war to life, but that's the main reason I don't find myself interested in what they do. I talked about this with the albums from the band Warkings, but glorifying war strikes me as a foolish thing to do. Even if you're telling stories about the heroes of war, it's still glorifying violence and telling us there is something noble in abandoning our humanity. Sometimes it is necessary, yes, but it should never be celebrated as a thing for us to shout and raise our fists about as if we're having a good time. The lessons are to be learned to avoid ever going through that again, and I don't think Sabaton feels that way at all.

Writing this review as the largest ground operation in Europe since WWII unfolds, I find the focus even more tasteless. People are literally dying in the streets, and Sabaton is making money off wars of the past. Millions died fighting, and Sabaton has turned that human suffering into cheesy entertainment they think is a bonding experience. I just don't get it.

The song I find most offensive is "Christmas Truce", which paints as a lovely story how the soldiers on both sides stopped fighting on Christmas, celebrating together. Joakim sings about them as all being 'friends', which is pulled from a letter written by a soldier who was there. Despite it being historical, it makes no sense in the context of the song, because of Joakim's poor writing. The song is written in both the past and present tense, and the word is used in both. In the present tense section, it could be understandable that they used the term in the moment, possibly in the same way politicians who clearly hate those on the other side still refer to their colleagues as 'friends'. In the past tense, it is not so understandable, and Joakim's lyric doesn't make clear if he is referring to soldiers on both sides, or just his own. His framing of the story makes it confusing.

But the story itself is a head-scratcher, as to why he wants to promote it as a wonderful moment. The soldiers were trying to kill each other, then stopped, then went right back to trying to kill each other again. What that indicates to me is their ability to call off the fighting for one day shows they could have done that at any point, but continued killing anyway. How is that a cheerful, noble story? It's beyond sad to me.

That song at least works as a song. "Sarajevo" opens the record as a horrible mistake. It's a pastiche of narration with a chorus, and can someone tell me what a spoken history of the beginnings of WWI has to do with a guitar solo? It's a poor way to introduce us to music we might want to listen to, because all I want to do is hit 'skip'.

Beyond those issues, Sabaton's brand of power metal has its appeal. It's a simple formula; a stock riff, a big choir of voices, and a guitar solo. When it works, I get why they're as big as they are. There is something communal about voices coming together and singing a triumphant song. I just wish they could direct us toward that goal without it having so many negative connotations. Could you imagine watching "Saving Private Ryan" and having the audience all holding prop guns and making 'pew pew' sounds as the beaches get stormed? Of course you can't, but that's sort of what Sabaton will be doing when they ask 80,000 people at Wacken to sing along with them.

Perhaps all of this is a calculated play, because Joakim's voice is not what we would normally call 'good'. His voice rumbles with an odd timbre, and I have my doubts he can pull off subject matter other than this. His voice doesn't have the expression for more complicated emotions, and his performances have the odd quality of growing softer in many of the choruses, where he lets the backing vocals cover up the fact he can't elevate his voice beyond where he's singing in the verses. The dirty theater of war covers for his shortcomings.

What that all amounts to is that Sabaton is a band of completely divergent thoughts. On the one hand, this album is full of thundering and catchy power metal. It's a fun ride. On the other hand, this album shouldn't be fun, because we shouldn't be making horrors into fluffy entertainment. So that leaves me in the weird position of saying this album is one of the best experiences I've had with Sabaton's music, but it also offends my sensibilities. It's good, but I hate it. I enjoyed my time listening, but I didn't want to. Maybe in a world where these stories sound like fiction made up to dramatize the past, but not in a world where they are still happening. This is the wrong album for this time.