Sabaton on Creative Freedom, Video Games and Evolving with the Internet

At Gamescom 2025 in Cologne, I had the opportunity to interview Pär Sundström and Thorbjörn “Thobbe” Englund from Swedish power metal band Sabaton who was playing a concert for the games developer Wargaming at the trade show. Pär is Sabaton’s bass player and manager and co-founded the band in 1999 with singer Joakim Brodén. Thobbe played lead guitar for the band from 2012 to 2016 and has recently returned as lead guitarist for the upcoming Legendary Tour.

As you might know, I’ve been an enthusiatic Sabaton fan since I first discovered them through their music DLC for the grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV in 2016 and subsequently seeing them live at Elb Riot festival in Hamburg in the same year. I even travelled from Hamburg to Falun in Sweden on my motorbike in 2018 to attend Sabaton Open Air. I’ve now seen them live over a dozen times, including at Wacken 2019 and three times at Gamescom.

After having sold some stories based on this interview to various publications, I’ve decided to publish the full text of it here as a treat for the loyal readers of my blog.

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Sabaton & Video Games

Guys, thanks for doing this! In your hotel room, no less. It’s an honour. This is very rock and roll. Alright, let’s start with this one. First question: Is it true that you had the idea for the band while playing video games?

Pär: That is an urban legend. We got the idea to form the band from drinking beer. It was beers and the shared love of heavy metal.

That’s a solid reason. You have mentioned before that you’re gamers, though.

Pär: Yes. It’s a natural part of this. Of what we do.

What kind of things do you play?

Pär: Most of the time, I play single player games. Something with epic storytelling.

Things like RPGs?

Pär: Well, Baldur’s Gate 3 or The Last of Us are my top two games of my life, I think. But also Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War — those kinds of really epic, movie-like games. But I also really love tactical games, like XCOM. But there, the time that they take is a little bit much. And they’re not couch-playable, so it’s hard sometimes. But I just downloaded the Definitive Edition of Dawn of War. That’s fun, because it works even on my laptop on an airplane. So that’s great, because I have some time and I’m not online.

That would have been my next question here: When do you guys find time to play video games?

Thobbe [with a mocking look towards Pär]: I would never have time for that, I play guitar.

Pär: There isn’t that much time for it, that is true. I guess most of the time I am watching trailers and buying games, but I’m not playing them too much. I’m so exited about a lot of stuff! That’s why Gamescom is such an insanely cool thing for me, because here I get just the right amount of stuff to get exited about a game. I get to see it and I’m like: oooh yeah! And then I buy it and it just sits there in my Steam account.

Sometimes, that’s the best way to enjoy a game. Sometimes it turns out the actual experience doesn’t live up to that first, exited feeling.

Pär: That is true. Sometimes, that’s also the case. For me to really properly dedicate time to play a game, it needs to be absolutely something different. When The Last of Us II came out, it was like: Okay, I got to put the world on pause now. Same with Baldur’s Gate 3. This was something I’ve been waiting for a big portion of my life and then I see all the people talking about it. And all my friends are like: You gotta get into this! And yeah, when it is that good, I’m like … yeah … I will make the time.

I haven’t started that one yet. But it’s sitting there in my Steam library waiting for me. I will make the time someday. I know it’s very good.

Pär: It is. And I think they’ve finished all the updates now. I usually like to wait a bit, too, before I start playing a game. I like it to be done. I would get offended if I start playing something and I find out it’s an unfinished game.

You guys do so many collaborations and projects with game companies, like the stuff you are doing with Wargaming. What does it feel like to have your ideas and likenesses in a game?

Pär: The Sabaton tank in World of Tanks? Of course … Not only that, just to see our name there is very cool. When you log into the Playstation Store and see “Sabaton” there … that’s really cool! Stuff like that is an amazing feeling.

It’s just such a good fit. I often listen to your songs when playing games. They’re so epic, it just goes together so well with an epic story.

Pär: You’re not the only one. We know from many surveys, and also from talking to developers and publishers, that gaming audiences listen more to Sabaton than to many other bigger bands in our genre. I think this has to do with the topics we sing about and also with the visual theme of the band. We connect with gamers somehow.

It seems to me that you’re putting a lot of work into your visual presentation. Including using huge screens like at the Gamescom stage last night and having epic visuals for all of the songs.

Pär: We also try to make our music videos pretty epic and interesting. I think this is also a treat for the fans. They see that we spend a little bit of effort, you know, dress up as templars on a hot day, things like that.

Thobbe: I think that’s a cool thing to do. Because I remember, when I was a kid, you had this visual about a song you love from some metal band and you almost saw the video: it should be like that. And then you saw the video and it was … meeeeh. It was cheap and, you know, so I think for the fans this is a very cool thing to have that approach.

Pär: Yeah. That’s why we put a lot of effort into it.

Lots of people have been saying for a while now that music videos are dead. You guys obviously didn’t listen to that.

Pär: No, we didn’t. You know, we are a visual band. We only revealed two videos from the new album so far, but we filmed a lot of them. So there’s more coming.

The Creative Direction of the New Album

I can’t wait! With all the different topics on that new album … I listened to it last night for the first time and I really like it, I think. I have to listen to it some more, but so far it reminds me very much of Heroes. While we are on that topic: You did a lot of World War I for a long time and now you’re going back in time — what was the creative decision behind that? Instead of, let’s say, doing more World War II stuff?

Pär: It really started with Joakim, our singer, working on the song Templars. On the music for it. And when he was finished we were like: This ain’t World War I. It doesn’t sound like that. It sounds amazing, but it’s not that. It sounds like a templar song. And what do we do now? Do we do more of that? Do we stay with medieval times? And then we came up with the title: Legends. It was an exciting title and it also opens a lot of possibilities. It made it easier in that we were suddenly not bound by rules and morals. It’s a more open space.

Thobbe: If you go that far back in time, there’s a lot of headroom for imagination, you know? Because it’s not that well documented.

Is that usually your process, that you have the music first? Before you think of lyrics?

Pär: Yes. The music comes first. That’s pretty natural. First of all, it is complicated to purpose-write a song. Like, okay … this song is going to be about, let’s say, Joan of Arc. How does it sound? It’s super complicated. Where do you start?

Thobbe: Tempo, rhythm, melody … What would fit for her?

Pär: It’s super difficult. So it must be the opposite way. And then, there’s no rules when writing the songs. They can be whatever. The songs become much better when they are focused on the music first. And focused on the sound of metal, which is our goal.

So an album like Legends then gives you even more freedom, because everything is more open. As opposed to everything having to fit World War I themes.

Pär: Exactly. A song like A Tiger Among Dragons wouldn’t fit on a World War I album.

Thobbe: No. I don’t think so.

Pär: It’s like … how do we find a topic for that music in there? I don’t know. So that wouldn’t work. And also: Templars — it doesn’t fit in there. So in case of a World War I album, we would actually skip those songs. And save them for the future. So this sometimes happens. But with an album like Legends, we don’t have to skip anything. We just take the best songs, because there will be enough topics, ‘cause we have so many to choose from. From all over the world, from all periods of history.

Thobbe: But when you have thirty legends that you’re thinking about and then you have eleven songs, then you have to decide which legend would fit which song.

You can always do Legends II — More Legends.

Pär: Yeah! [Laughs.]

Thobbe: The world is full of legends …

On the Sabaton Sound

One thing I really like about you is that Sabaton always sounds like Sabaton. Is that creatively freeing for you, a good thing, or does it hamstring you?

Thobbe: I mean … putting us together … it becomes that sound. It’s the Sabaton sound. I think it’s in our DNA. It happens when you combine us.

Pär: It was never meant … When we found our sound — this is in 2004 during the demo recordings of Primo Victoria — that’s where it was found. The way of organising the chorus, the way of writing the stuff. And it was not inspired by anyone. There was no band that we looked to. That we thought, we want to sound like them. We just discovered: This is what we do now. And: We sound like this! Not trendy, not inspired by anyone, we just found … this is us. And we found our sound very early. I mean we can hear the development …

Oh, I can hear the development. But it’s still Sabaton.

Thobbe: The suspended chords and the choirs …

Pär: The development is gigantic. We just perfect it a bit, every time. Every album, we do start from zero with the guitar sounds and all of that, but the process is always: Okay, let’s create something new. And in the end, it sounds like Sabaton.

I see a lot of development in the lyrics, too.

Pär: We hear it in the way we do the songs … the performances. But it’s not taking steps to properly change the DNA of the band.

There are bands where you get the feeling that, at some point, they decided they want to be something different. And that’s often when it goes off the rails, to be honest.

Thobbe: Oh yeah. We never care about, hmm, let’s see, which way is the wind blowing?

Pär: We expect a lot of people to say that, oh hey, the new Sabaton album sounds like the old Sabaton album! But we do not take that criticism on board. We don’t think, hey, they are telling us we need to change something. We’re not gonna bother about that. We’re just gonna continue doing our stuff and, hey, if someone really dislikes what we’re doing … I’m sorry! But we’re not gonna change.

I mean, they can always listen to another band.

Thobbe: Yes. Feel free!

The Ups and Downs of the Internet

You obviously engage quite a lot with the internet, as a band. It feels like you take a lot of suggestions from your fans. How do you deal with the negative stuff? There must be a lot of it.

Pär: I mean, yeah, the Internet has a lot of that. But I think that, first of all, we have a super fantastic fanbase. We have so many fans that a very familiar with what our values are and what we stand for. They read all the interviews and they know what Sabaton is about. So if somebody comes along and writes something negative, we don’t get involved, but there’s usually somebody else who will explain that, no, you got it wrong, this is not what Sabaton are like. So we have a lot of fantastic fans. And yeah, sometimes, you just shouldn’t listen to the negative things. The negative things take over, that’s how the algorithms work on social media and if you stare too much into that you will become … like … hmmm, hmmm [shakes head]. And if you put too much stock into what you think is going on … I mean, very early, we made this big mistake that we thought we were super popular in the Netherlands, because we were getting more emails from the Netherlands than a lot of other countries. And we were like: Oh, we must be very big there. So we need a show there. And I pushed, and we get a show there and there was very few people showing up. And later on, I figured out that Dutch people are just very outspoken. And they just simply …

Thobbe: … communicate. A lot!

Pär: We want you to play here! So, of course, we write you to tell you that we want you to play! They just do it more than other people. And we didn’t know how to read those signals at that point. So we thought we had a lot of friends there. I can say, it’s the same with Australia. Australians, they are super friendly and very social. And they like to communicate and they like to say: You’re welcome here! Please play in our country! And it’s very easy to think that you are bigger than you actually are in such a place. With the internet, we arrived in a time where we, as a band, didn’t really know the before. Sabaton started in ‘99 and was sort of part of the internet revolution of the music industry. And we were pretty tech-interested people, so we didn’t look at that negatively. So we were early adopters in that world and we never lived in the before times, like so many of our colleagues, who always talked about the time when they were selling hundreds of thousands, or millions, of CDs. We never experienced those times. So …

Thobbe: … we didn’t know anything about that. We grew up, as a band, in a new era.

Pär: So now, these days, we are very upset with social media companies. They need to put more effort into stopping counterfeiting, the frauds … We have a whole staff of legal people that do nothing but to go after and try to fix problems on social networks. As much as I loved social media, and it’s been helpful, now I am angry with those companies. And I think that they really need to step up their game and stop this. Because, on a daily basis, we are closing down so many accounts where they create fake versions of us, or of our crew members, or staff members …

So we aren’t talking unlicensed music here?

Thobbe: No, no! Fake profiles and stuff like that.

Pär: This is what they do. They go in and they pretend to be working for Sabaton and they find our most vulnerable fans, and they explain to them that this is how you buy a short meet and greet with a band member … Do this and we will send you a link to a Zoom call and then the singer will pop up at such and such time and … [sighs] … they continue down that road … It’s very cleverly done. But the social media networks need to take that on. We have a lot of legal stuff going on, all the time, helping fans and going after these things. That’s a problem now. Especially because it’s escalating and the numbers are pretty scary.

And AI technology is probably not helping with that.

Pär: No. AI is also scary, because it’s now taking over this stuff. A while ago it would have been mostly humans who did this and now it’s AI, being used to scam people. And it’s so easy to do, because, we know that we have a lot of diehard fans. And if they think that they are talking to somebody real, and it feels real, then its such a vulnerable position. Because its your favourite band. Of course you’d want to support them. And if somebody says: This money goes directly to the band. It’s not going to the record label, it’s not going to Spotify, you can just support the band directly here. And people think: Yeah! I support the band. Of course! And these people make up stories like … oh … the band has been in an accident and they need money to pay for hospital bills … You know, that kind of stuff. Here’s a collection site for paying hospital bills … It’s horrible what they do. And they’re creative as hell, these people. But, yeah, at some point, the platforms need to step up their game.

But you said you have people working on this?

Pär: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have people. We have a whole bunch of various lawyers who specialise in these things. And our team is constantly monitoring this. But as long as the platforms don’t stop it, we’re just managing. But there’s no way we can stop it at the moment. And it’s just getting worse, all the time. And they’re getting more clever. So we’re always one step behind. To give you a little bit of sense of the scale of it: The amount of shops that our legal team closes, in one year, is 4000. These would be bootleg stores, and various other things. And the amount of accounts that we take down, only from Meta — which would be Instagram and Facebook — is around fifty per week. And it’s a costly thing for us.

And you are doing your own merch, so it’s obvious when something isn’t coming from you.

Pär: Of course. We own our own mail-order because we always want our fans to have the best stuff.

Sabaton in School

One can tell. I own quite a lot of it. But let’s end on a happier note here. I know a number of school teachers that use your music in class, which I find very cool. Am I right to assume that you never expected this to happen?

Pär: Oh no. We never intended for it to happen. But we saw it happen more and more and more. And, these days, we do encourage it. We help with that. There are several teachers who are using our movie, The War To End All Wars, because its easily accessible for many people. And we got this very beautiful message from a Polish school teacher once, who said: The school system gives me all these tools. A toolbox full of books, and things like that. And when I go through my whole toolbox, I can do this and that and the other thing. And I need to use the full box in order to gain the attention of everyone in class. Or I can put on one song and I have the attention of everyone instantly. So you were able to make something there that’s more powerful than my whole toolbox of history teaching, because you grab the attention of the whole class in an instant. And out of that then grows the rest. The follow-up questions and those kinds of things — every teacher does that differently. But that is a very beautiful thing to me. To hear that.

Man, I would have loved that as a kid.

Thobbe: Exactly!

Thank you guys! That was awesome!

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Sabaton’s upcoming album Legends is out on 17 October 2025 on all the major streaming platforms.