{"id":15828,"date":"2016-04-06T01:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T05:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=15828"},"modified":"2016-03-24T07:05:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T11:05:33","slug":"content-needed-blowin-wind-with-sabatons-joakim-broden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=15828","title":{"rendered":"Blowin&#8217; Wind with Sabaton&#8217;s Joakim Broden: &#8221; We take our music and our lyrics very seriously but we don&#8217;t take ourselves seriously so that shines through way better on a live album.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>In a nutshell, Sabaton is hands down one of the best metal bands out there on the road today.\u00a0 Playing hundreds of shows a year, Sabaton has build a diehard following of fans that flock to see them perform live anywhere and everywhere.\u00a0 Whether they&#8217;re playing a small club to a few hundred to headlining the prestigious Wacken Festival, Sabaton always deliver a top notch, arena worthy performance that leaves you wanting more and will undoubtedly make you a fan.\u00a0 Ever since seeing them a few years back for the first time I knew I was seeing something really special and hell, no other band could even make me want to buy a camo shirt with their band logo on it.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>I recently had the chance to catch up with lead singer Joakim Broden and, as always, he was his happy, hilarious, chipper self.\u00a0 We talked about how happy he is with this Sabaton lineup, why Sabaton has released so many awesome live album, and just what his favorite live albums are to listen to as a fan.\u00a0 It was so great to catch up with Joakim again and I hope you all will enjoy this one as much as I did.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joakim, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to day.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s great to talk to you again.\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a while since we last talked.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sabaton has released yet another live album and it&#8217;s a killer as always.\u00a0 Are you pulling from Iron Maiden play book of releasing live albums?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[laughs] In a sense, yes [laughs].\u00a0 I mean, if you&#8217;re going to steal shit, steal from the best, right?<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>As big a Sabaton fan as I am, I&#8217;ve always felt that the studio albums didn&#8217;t really capture what you guys are about like the live albums do.\u00a0 Is this why you&#8217;ve put out so many live releases?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, yes and no.\u00a0 To be honest, I agree very much with what you say about the vibe being different.\u00a0 We take our music and our lyrics very seriously but we don&#8217;t take ourselves seriously so that shines through way better on a live album.\u00a0 There are several reason for that.\u00a0 Obviously, one of them is for egotistical reasons.\u00a0 We were one of the headliners of Wacken.\u00a0 I want to see that shit too, you know?\u00a0 [laughs]\u00a0 Also, our previous live releases are with other lineups.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve had so many lineup changes in the last two or three years but this one has been stable for some time now.\u00a0 We just thought it was time to have a live release with Sabaton with how we sound now which I think is the best version of Sabaton there ever was.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>This line up of Sabaton has been stable and on fucking fire these days.\u00a0 Do you feel like you&#8217;ve really found your footing with these guys?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I hope so because seriously, this line up feels best from both a musical and a personal standpoint.\u00a0 Of course, Chris and Thorbj\u00f6rn, our lovely guitar boys, have been in the band for four years now [laughs].\u00a0 In that sense, over four years you kind of grow close.\u00a0 Hannes we knew before.\u00a0 Both me and P\u00e4r toured with him when he was in Evergrey.\u00a0 It&#8217;s finally coming to a place where everybody can feel comfortable and trust each other.\u00a0 We always say that it doesn&#8217;t matter how well rehearsed you are or how good you think you are.\u00a0 Before you&#8217;ve done 100 shows together, you don&#8217;t have your shit together [laughs].<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is it about live albums that you, as a music listener, love so much?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Actually, I don\u2019t know what it is but I just like them.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to put my finger on but it also depends on the band.\u00a0 For us, I think you get more a real vibe interacting with the crowd.\u00a0 We are a band that interacts quite a bit with the crowd and that, to me, is half of the live experience.\u00a0 In a sense, when we do a record in the studio, half of Sabaton is missing [laughs].<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9FkYxnm70vg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>What are some of your favorite live albums?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, that depends on what kind of mood I\u2019m in but there are there that come to mind directly, actually four.\u00a0 I really love Accept\u2019s Staying Alive.\u00a0 That\u2019s from the Metal Heart tour I believe.\u00a0 There\u2019s an energy there that you don\u2019t get from the album and they are also playing some of the songs differently.\u00a0 I love Iron Maiden\u2019s A Real Live One and A Real Dead One because they take some songs from different places all over the world and that I really like.\u00a0 Deep Purple\u2019s Made In Japan or Live in Stuttgart albums are just fantastic.\u00a0 Those jam sessions when you have such fantastic musicians and the changes that happen to the songs.\u00a0 It\u2019s magical.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>The last time we talked, Heroes had just been released.\u00a0 I asked your thoughts on it and you said, &#8220;I never really know what I\u2019m going to think about an album until about a year after its release.&#8221;\u00a0 Well, now that you&#8217;ve had some time to sit with it, how do you feel about the album?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, I can honestly say that it is our best album.\u00a0 I mean, it all comes down to taste but I can honestly say that it\u2019s either the best or the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> best.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think any SAbaton fan could discard this one as a crappy album.\u00a0 I\u2019m very happy with how it turned out but as always, when I\u2019m in the middle of something I have no idea.\u00a0 Every album we ever did I was constantly for the last part of the songwriting, recording, and mixing I was in a constant state of hopelessness and happiness [laughs].<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>How far in advance are you usually writing for the next Sabaton album?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When it comes to gathering ideas for songs, that never stops.\u00a0 I started writing the album that we\u2019re about to come out with very soon while we were still in the studio for Heroes.\u00a0 As for putting things together and making them in songs completely, that\u2019s very late in the process.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sabaton has definitely solidified themselves somewhat as a conceptual band in that all of your material does tend to reflect stories of war history.\u00a0 Have you ever considered doing a Sabaton that wasn\u2019t that?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I mean, yes we\u2019ve considered having a cease fire [laughs].\u00a0 Actually, yes and no.\u00a0 There have been several thoughts about it but whenever we think about it, it\u2019s not something we want to do.\u00a0 We could do an album about great experiences from firefighters or police officers or something like that because it would fit the music but in general, no.\u00a0 I feel like there are so many great stories untold in military history that are being forgotten.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather tell those stories that to come up with new stories.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Being that you feel that these stories really need to be told, is that your motivation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s one of them.\u00a0 My first is my love of music.\u00a0 I love to write music and to play live.\u00a0 If I\u2019m going to be honest with you, before we did the first album, we didn\u2019t have a military topic.\u00a0 We could write about anything.\u00a0 At that point, writing lyrics was a necessary evil.\u00a0 We just wanted them to be good enough so they didn\u2019t make the song worse [laughs].\u00a0 Going from writing about any topic at all to writing about military history, the lyrics weren\u2019t just there because we needed them.\u00a0 Now we could tell a story.\u00a0 I appreciate writing lyrics twice as much now.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is one song that you never get tired of playing night after night?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Probably \u201cPrimo Victoria\u201d or \u201cTo Hell and Back\u201d because of the feel good vibe in the songs and all the memories I have with them.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is a song that hasn&#8217;t been played live in a while or if ever that you&#8217;d love to see make the setlist?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Oh, that\u2019s a good one.\u00a0 I do think that we have some songs that deserve on the setlist but I think \u201cThe Final Solution.\u201d\u00a0 For sure, I really like that song.\u00a0 We played it on that tour in 2010 and I hope to see it return to the setlists some day.\u00a0 Some songs like \u201cAngels Calling\u201d from Attero Dominatus is quite a nice song and I appreciate it personally but 9\/10 fans either never heard it or don\u2019t want to hear it [laughs].\u00a0 It would be kind of stupid to put out a setlist of songs that we want to play when there are songs that are hugely requested that we haven\u2019t played in a while.\u00a0 That\u2019s pretty much our rule that we have.\u00a0 When we put together a setlist, we do it for the fans, not for us.\u00a0 There are five of us.\u00a0 There\u2019s probably going to be 5,000 other people out there so we\u2019re pretty outnumbered [laughs].<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>You guys are so in touch and in tune with your fans.\u00a0 Have you ever thought of doing a fan picked setlist?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve done that before but not in the way that you think.\u00a0 We have the Sabaton Cruise ever year that we take from Sweden to Finland.\u00a0 We started doing that before 70,000 Tons of Metal did back in 2009.\u00a0 One of the years we did two sets.\u00a0 We did one acoustic set and then on the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> half we had a big board and we gave them two or three songs to choose from.\u00a0 Whatever song they shouted louder for, that\u2019s the one we played.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Well, what happens when they hit you with a song that you guys forgot how to play?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, that\u2019s the beauty of it.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t put a song on the board that we couldn\u2019t play [laughs].\u00a0 It has happened a few times actually.\u00a0 Now, we have seven albums and especially now with band members coming in that weren\u2019t there for the beginning, obviously they\u2019re heard all the old songs but we\u2019ve never played the song \u201cWe Burn\u201d live.\u00a0 Seeing as that it\u2019s not very popular I never see us doing it.\u00a0 We do ask someone in the crowd sometimes.\u00a0 In Dublin, there was a girl from the German fanclub and it was her 100<sup>th<\/sup> Sabaton show.\u00a0 I mean, that\u2019s considereing that she\u2019s only been a fan of ours for 3 or 4 years.\u00a0 Getting that many shows over that short of time.\u00a0 We heard about this through some other channels and we asked her, \u201cIsabelle, what song do you want us to play now?\u201d\u00a0 Well, this can be a risk because keep in mind, we can only play about 50% of whatever we have done at any given point.\u00a0 She picked \u201cSaboteurs\u201d from Coat of Arms and we hadn\u2019t rehearsed or played it since October of last year.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Heroes tour boasted your biggest stage production to date.\u00a0 These kinds of productions seem to be lost art.\u00a0 Do you wish more bands did this?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think it comes down to the people caring and people wanting to keep money in their own pocket instead of investing in a stage show.\u00a0 It used to be normal back in the day to have lots of stuff on stage but these days, when I see a band I don\u2019t get a 3D effect from them.\u00a0 For so many other bands it\u2019s just backdrop, a couple of side drops, maybe a video and I\u2019m like really?\u00a0 I don\u2019t get it?\u00a0 It\u2019s not like they have anything that they can climb up on.\u00a0 I mean, we have a tank on stage [laughs].\u00a0 We can jump on it.\u00a0 It feels real.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WhA9BkOBrTE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>When you tour the states again, you must bring the tank with you.\u00a0 Even if it takes up the whole fucking club.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[laughs] Yes.\u00a0 Actually, we\u2019ve been thinking doing an alternative front for the tank.\u00a0 We could build another front in the US and use the tank.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s about five or six feet for us to run on so if we have half that, we could probably squeeze it in there.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maybe you can just use a Jeep or something.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No, no, no.\u00a0 A jeep is not cool.\u00a0 A tank is cool [laughs].<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>The political climate here in the US has gotten quite scary.\u00a0 What are you feeling about it looking from the outside in?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At this time it looks a bit like a circus.\u00a0 Everybody is shouting everywhere.\u00a0 It seems like the most media attention is always given to the ones with the most extreme opinions.\u00a0 This is not new in history.\u00a0 What fascinates me more is that people think this is something new.\u00a0 If there\u2019s one thing we can learn from history it\u2019s that people can\u2019t learn from history [laughs].<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>You would think would should be able to.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We should but it\u2019s also a matter of survival.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care for politics that much because I feel that politicians are driven by the ambition to be in office.\u00a0 They are not driven by the ambition to make the country better or to make their own dream come true.\u00a0 They will change their opinions based on what the polls say.\u00a0 No matter which political party, left or right, up or down, I would actually respect somebody who just came in and fought for what they believed in and didn\u2019t have to answer to 20 different lobby groups.\u00a0 Somebody who has been driving their own politics for their whole career because they believe in it.\u00a0 Not because this is what the public opinion is right now.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>The US needs Sabaton.\u00a0 Will you come over here and take care of Donald Trump for us?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[laughs] Yeah, let&#8217;s try to say that to Homeland Security and we&#8217;ll see what happens, right? [laughs]<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Just bring the tank!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[laughs] Yeah, it would be fun trying to go over there with a tank for the first time and explaining to your customs why we are bringing armored vehicles over.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>You have your own festival called Sabaton Open Air.\u00a0 You have your own festival!\u00a0 What made you guys do this?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Actually, in 2008 we wanted to do a release party for Art of War.\u00a0 There was no decent place to do it and no promoters so we rented an old military barracks actually and we invited other bands that we had toured with at the time and bands that we had seen in our area that were good but never had the chance to get a break.\u00a0 Then we just kept on doing it.\u00a0 We book all the bands.\u00a0 We book the bands that we like, bands we think deserve more, and bands we think that other Sabaton fans might like but maybe never heard.\u00a0 We also invite younger bands that see struggling.\u00a0 The climate right now is pretty fucking tough for new bands.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Finally, what&#8217;s up for the rest of 2016?\u00a0 More touring I hope?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We are looking at different options now and there&#8217;s a 95% chance that we&#8217;ll be hitting American again before the year is over.\u00a0 In three weeks, we start recording the new album.<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>What can you tell me about the new album?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well, Don, it&#8217;ll be about war [laughs].\u00a0 Keep it to yourself.\u00a0 It&#8217;s off the record [laughs].<\/p>\n<p>===========================================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joakim, thank you again for chatting today.\u00a0 It was so great catching up with you again.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No problem, Don.\u00a0 Thank you very much, my friend.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a nutshell, Sabaton is hands down one of the best metal bands out there on the road today.\u00a0 Playing hundreds of shows a year, Sabaton has build a diehard following of fans that flock to see them perform live anywhere and everywhere.\u00a0 Whether they&#8217;re playing a small club to a few hundred to headlining the prestigious Wacken Festival, Sabaton always deliver a top notch, arena worthy performance that leaves you wanting more and will undoubtedly make you a fan.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[1127,692],"class_list":["post-15828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-joakim-broden","tag-sabaton"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}