The Swedish Power Metal band Sabaton gave a concert at Gamescom for the third time. After a concert in 2017 directly at the status of the game developer Wargaming and a repetition in 2019, the Swedes played the new Gamescom event arena this year, which was dedicated to the entire exhibition hall 1. The admission to the exhibition hall had to be stopped because of the large rush. The concert was transferred live on Twitch to over 50,000 spectators. On the edge of the fair, Heise Online had the opportunity to talk to Sabaton bass player and band founder Pär Sundström about music, video games and the Internet.
Metal and video games
Table of Contents
Is it true that the band was founded when you and Joakim sat on the couch and played video games?
This is a urban legend. The idea of founding the band came to us while drinking beer. It was beer and the common love for the heavy metal.
That is a fairly solid foundation. Joakim and you always mention that you are gamers. This is not a legend, isn’t it?
No it’s not. Games are a natural part of us, of what makes us.
What do you play?
Most of the time I play singing player games. Something with an epic story. “Baldur’s Gate 3” and “The Last of Us” are my two favorite games ever, I think. But I also love “Horizon Zero Dawn” and “God of War” – such really epic, film -like games. Or tactical games like “XCOM”. But they take a lot of time. And you can’t play them on the couch, which sometimes makes it difficult. I have just downloaded the definitive edition of “Dawn of War”. It is fun because it even works on my laptop on the plane. It’s great because I have some time anyway and I’m not online anyway.
That would also be our next question. How the hell do you find the time to play video games?
It doesn’t have that much time for it, that’s right. I usually look at trailers and then buy playing, but I don’t play them so often. I am so enthusiastic about many games! That’s why Gamescom is always so incredibly cool for me, because here I always get so much anticipation for new games. I see a new game and think: oooh yes! And then I buy it and it is just lying around in my Steam account.
Sometimes that’s the best way to enjoy a game. In some games it turns out that the actual experience does not meet the initial expectations.
That’s correct. Sometimes that happens. So that I really focus on a game, it has to be something very special. When “The Last of Us II” came out, I thought: Okay, now I have to put the world on a break. The same was true for “Baldur’s Gate 3”. I waited a large part of my life for that, and then I see how everyone is talking about it. And all my friends say: You have to play that! And yes, if it is so good, then I think … yes … I’ll take the time. And I think you have now brought out all updates. I usually like to wait a bit before I start a game. I like it when games are really finished. I am then offended when I start to play something and then find that it is actually an unfinished game.
You do quite a few cooperations and projects with game manufacturers, such as what you did with Wargaming for “World of Tanks”. How does it feel when your ideas and characters are realized in a game?
How the Sabaton tank in World of Tanks? That was really cool! But not only that to see our name in the game alone is very cool. If you log in to the Playstation store and then see “Sabaton” there … something like that is an incredible feeling.
Your music also goes pretty well with such games.
From numerous surveys and discussions with developers and publishers, we know that gaming fans hear more Sabaton than many other, actually larger metal bands. I think that is related to the topics we sing about and also with the visual appearance of the band. We somehow have a connection to gamers.
Of course, we also try to make our music videos quite epic and interesting. I think that’s also something that fans appreciate. You see that we make a lot of effort, for example dressing up on a brooding hot set as a Templars and something like that. I remember how it was when you heard a metal song you loved as a child, and you had the video in your head directly. And then you see the real music video and think … Ehhhh … that looks cheap. We make a lot of effort to make it better and I think many fans appreciate this.
You have now sang about the First World War for a long time. Your new album, “Legends” reminded us of your 2014 album “Heroes”, which is one of your most popular. However, “Legends” goes back much further in time. What was your idea behind the new material?
Swimming poles: It actually started that Joakim, our singer, worked on the song “Templars” – on the music for the song. And when he was finished, we thought: this is not the First World War. It doesn’t sound like that. It sounds fantastic, but it is not the First World War. It sounds like a temple knight song. What do we do now? Do we do more of it? Do we stay with the Middle Ages? And then we came up with the title: Legends. This is an exciting title that opens up many options. It made it easier that suddenly we were no longer tied to certain rules and the moralisms of modern times. It is a more open space. When you go back to the past so far, there is a lot of scope for imagination because the records of that time are very incomplete.
We expect many people to say: “Hey, the new Sabaton album sounds like the old Sabaton album!” But we don’t take this criticism seriously. We don’t think: “They tell us, we have to change something.” We don’t care. We just keep going our thing, and hey if someone really doesn’t like what we do … I’m sorry! Really. But we won’t change.
Sabaton and the Internet
It is obvious that you are in a fairly lively contact with your fans as a band on the Internet. How do you deal with negative comments? You probably get quite a few of them.
Oh yes, there is a lot of negative on the Internet. But I think we have a great fan base. We have a lot of fans who are very familiar with our values and our work. You read all interviews and know what Sabaton is about. So when someone comes and writes something negative, we don’t interfere. There is usually someone who can get by and explains “No, you got that wrong, Sabaton are not.” We have fantastic fans. And yes, sometimes you just shouldn’t go into the negative things. This stuff quickly takes over the upper hand, so the algorithms work on social media, and if you concentrate too much on it, you will simply … [schüttelt den Kopf].
You should also be really careful not to place too much emphasis on pure internet feedback. At the very beginning we made this big mistake that we thought we were super popular in the Netherlands because we got more emails from the Netherlands than from many other countries. And we thought: Oh, we have to be very huge there. So we need an appearance there. And I pushed for it and we finally got an appearance there. And then very few people came. Later I found out that the Dutch are simply very open and like to communicate. It is similar with the Australians: they are simply super social and open.
It looks as if you grew up with the internet.
As a band, we don’t even know the time before the Internet. Sabaton was founded ’99 and was, so to speak, part of the internet revolution in the music industry. We were quite enthusiastic about technology, so we did not see this development negative. So we were early adopter As for technology and, as a band, never really lived in the time before. In contrast to many of our colleagues who always spoke of the time when they sold hundreds of thousands or millions of CDs. We have never experienced these times. So we didn’t know anything about it. We grew up in a new era as a band.
Nowadays, however, we are very upset about the social media companies. They really have to make more effort to prevent counterfeits and fraud. We have an entire team of lawyers who do nothing but to pursue and fix problems on social networks. As much as I love social media and as helpful as it was for us, now I’m angry with these companies. And I think you really have to do more to combat it. We close so many accounts with fakes from us, our crew members or employees every day …
Fraud via fake profiles
So we don’t talk about license violations of your music here?
No no! Fake profiles and such things. They pretend to work for Sabaton, seek our most vulnerable fans and explain to them that you have a short one meet and greet can buy with a band member. Pay here and then we send you a link to a zoom call, and then the singer appears at a certain time and … [seufzt] … it always goes on like this. That is made very clever. Nevertheless: the social networks have to take care of it. We have to do something like that, help the fans and proceed against such things. This is quite a problem today. Especially because it escalates and the numbers are quite scary.
And the AI technology probably makes it worse?
Exactly. AI is also scary because she now takes on these tasks. Some time ago it was mainly people, now it is AI to be used to cheat on our fans. And we have a lot of die -hard fans. And when they think that they speak real with someone and it feels real, they are in a very vulnerable position. Because it is her favorite band. Of course you want to support the band. And when someone says: “This money goes directly to the band. It doesn’t go to the record company, it doesn’t go to Spotify, you can support the band here directly.” Then people think: “Yes, of course! I clearly support the band!”
And then stories are invented. Something like: The band had an accident and needs money to pay the hospital bills. Something like that. “You can send money here.” What these people do is terrible. These people are damn creative. But at some point the platforms now have to wake up and start leveling up.
In the meantime, are your people there?
Yes, we have people. We have a number of different lawyers who specialize in such things. And our team monitors that all the time. But as long as the platforms do not prevent this, we can only run afterwards. But we can’t stop it. And it is getting worse. And the scammer are getting clever. So we are always one step afterwards.
To give a small impression of the extent: the number of shops that our lawyers close in one year is 4000. It is about pirated copies and various other things. And the number of social media accounts that we delete on Meta alone-i.e. Instagram and Facebook-is around fifty per week. This is a costly affair for us.
Metal in music lessons
In order to complete the whole thing with something more pleasant, we would like to change the topic again. You hear again and again from teachers who use Sabaton’s songs as a teaching material in history lessons. Would you have ever dreamed of something like that when you founded the band over a beer in 1999?
Oh no! That was never our intention. But we saw that it seemed more and more. And nowadays, of course, promote that. We help. There are several teachers who use our film “The War to End All Wars” because it is easily accessible to students.
And we received a very nice news from a Polish teacher. He wrote to us: “The school system gives me all of these tools – a whole toolbox full of books and similar things. And when I look through my entire toolbox, I can do this and that and that. And I have to use the whole box to get the attention of everyone in the class. Or I can put on a song and immediately have the attention of all students. Because a song immediately attracts the whole class. What then follows – every teacher does it differently. But I thought this email was really great. It was very nice to hear that!
Thank you for taking the time for this interview.
The eleventh Sabaton studio album “Legends” will be released on October 17th and is available on all streaming platforms that day. The eleven songs deal with legendary figures in human history, from Julius Caesar to Dschingis Khan and Jeanne d’Arc to Napoleon.
(NO)
