Legends, the latest album from Swedish power metal titans Sabaton, shines a spotlight on legendary figures and events from a wide span of world history. I spoke with frontman Joakim Brodén about a lineup change, a new record label, the album, his Hello Kitty guitar and other topics.
Chad Bowar: What led to guitarist Thobbe Englund rejoining the band last year after a several year absence?
Joakim Brodén: It is a very simple story, but it took us a while to get there, actually. Tommy (Johansson) came to us in late ’23 and told us I love you guys, but I got a thousand things I really want to do, and I can’t do them all. Sabaton needs to be priority number one for anyone who’s in it, so I gotta go do my other shit, you know? And fair enough, no problem with that on my part. I think everybody should do what they want, and we want people in Sabaton who want to be in Sabaton. But it did give us a bit of a problem, because we only had two or three months left until the album recording started, and we had the Judas Priest spring tour. So we talked to Tommy about it, and he said, I can do the Judas Priest tour in the spring, no worries, but I want to be out by summer if possible. So we had some time, and we thought about it and thought about it.
We talked about a few names, but nothing panned out, really. And we sat down and said, well, okay, we gotta make a choice now. We gotta go out openly and ask for auditions. But before we do, we asked who would we all choose to have in the bunk above us in the tour bus. And everybody basically said yeah, that’s Thobbe, but we can’t have him. And then when we went around and all four who were in the band at the time had said that, we said, well, it’s probably gonna be a no, but since that’s what we all wanted, we should ask him.
So I talked to him and told him about Tommy leaving, and in case we didn’t find another guitarist, could he maybe fill in during the summer? And he said, yeah, sure. So actually the night before we started the studio recording, I went to his house. He lives only five minutes away from my parents, so that’s convenient. And I asked him, and he said, yeah, I’ve been thinking about it since I heard Tommy left, and you asked me about that summer thing, but I’m not sure. He said I would love to do it though, but I need time to think about this, because he started a new life again, because Sabaton took him out of his old life, and then he started a new life. So he said, I need a week. We were like, sure, absolutely. I drove back to my apartment, which is 15 minutes away, and he called me when I was driving up to the driveway and said, yeah, I’m in.
Was Legends a change of pace to tackle some different subject matter?
For sure we knew we wanted out of World War I. I’m not saying we’re never touching that again, but it was a bit much with two albums, and it’s a very dark period in time. A lot of these people like Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Vlad the Impaler, have been suggested to us, but also been at the back of our minds. These would be great people to sing about in a Sabaton album. It didn’t strike us before what they had in common, though. We always want to keep a sort of a concept or at least a theme to an album. So what’s the theme? Should we do the Roman Empire or Roman Republic or that era? We would love to make a couple songs about Napoleon, but the whole album? At a certain point we just realized that all of these people we said we wanted to sing about, they have this thing in common, that they’re legends. And the only thing we had to change about is, we always like to dig up one or two things nobody’s ever heard about before, which isn’t possible, because then you wouldn’t be a legend.
Since each one of these subjects of the songs could have been an entire album, was it difficult to figure out what to focus on with each person?
Yeah, that’s a tricky part. In a way it’s chosen by the song or the style of the song or whatever way we find most interesting. Sometimes it’s fun to go first person perspective. A lot of these people were not only legends, they were borderline insane as well. It’s not a moral implication of being a legend, you can be an asshole and be a legend as well. So with this one the trickiest was, I would say, the difference in how much material was available. If we look at Senusret III, that’s the earliest one, that’s 1800 before Christ. Luckily enough, the ancient Egyptians had a writing system and were pretty damned advanced for their time. So we could find material about him, and he was deified during his lifetime, which wasn’t normal. They were normally considered gods once they died, but his subjects wrote hymns about him, and those hymns were the basis of the lyrics there.
The video shoot for “Templars” looked pretty complex with all the costumes and sword fighting. Is that one of the most elaborate video shoots you’ve been a part of?
It certainly was the hottest. That was brutal, almost 100 degrees, and we’re stuck in this small room in a castle. The castle was huge though, but that room was tiny, and there’s a fire burning, eating all the oxygen and adding to the heat. Everybody wanted to have as much water to drink as possible, but when you drink, you need to pee. In those uniforms, it takes a while, and when you actually had to go, there were no toilets in the castles, you had to go outside through the courtyard and over to some cafes. It would take us a good 15 to 30 minutes to go for a pee break. And what we didn’t consider was that tourists who were walking around the castle, when they saw us running around in those uniforms, they thought we were a part of the show, so they stopped us to take selfies.
Did you have a sword fighting trainer?
Yeah, we came down, we were there for three or four days. First day was arrival, costume and armor fitting, and fighting choreography. It was sword fighting, but with basically, harder pool noodles for the training. The people we were fighting against were part of a historical reconstruction group called the White Eagles, and they knew what they were doing, as opposed to us. So they helped carry us where our skills wouldn’t really match up. But we trained with them, and then the first day we did the indoor scenes, most of them. And then the second day we moved to another castle that had a more impressive exterior and wasn’t a tourist site where we did the battle scenes, and that’s where we did the dying. We were good at it.
How did you come to sign with Better Noise Music?
I think they were crazy enough to take us. We were negotiating with Nuclear Blast, our old label, and several other labels. And with Nuclear Blast it felt like we’d been there, we’d done that. A lot of the people we loved and have worked with over the years there weren’t working there anymore. They’d gone through a lot of changes. Nothing bad about the company and the people who are still there. We’re still working with them, because our catalog is there, obviously. Some labels are really on to the new school of thought, streaming and everything. Some are very old school in their ways of thinking. However, Better Noise were really exciting, because they weren’t thinking new school or old school, but rather a hybrid. And most importantly, they had some great ideas, and they were willing to listen to our crazy ideas. So sure, let’s try it.
As part of this release, there are tons of different vinyl variants that are available. Are you a vinyl collector?
Do you collect? Not me. Chris and Pat are, though. Chris is the craziest guy. I mean, his Iron Maiden and Blind Guardian collection… I have a lot of Blind Guardian albums, but I think he has more editions of every album than I have albums. I like vinyl because of the format and the nostalgic factor. I’d happily listen to it at home, but the logistics of bringing a vinyl player on tour, hell no.
Are you a collector of anything else?
Not really, I guess I’m not of the collector mindset. I mean, I probably have too many synthesizers, but let’s not call it a collection yet. I have too many guitars, that’s for sure. I mean, as a songwriter I could do with two.
Speaking of guitars, what was the origin of the Hello Kitty guitar that you play live now?
We were going on tour and we have this square of gaffers tape on the floor of the warehouse. So after rehearsals, our production manager said, everything that’s going on tour that you’re not bringing yourself, that goes in there. And I forgot to put my guitar there. So I called back to the other guys and I asked them to put my guitar in that thing. They said yeah sure, we’ll take care of it for you. And instead of my guitar was a pink Hello Kitty guitar. And now it’s become a thing. I complained about it. Seriously, you can’t expect me to play this because it wouldn’t hold tuning and I didn’t like the pickup, it sounds crappy. So the guitar tech said, I’ll sort it out for you. And I figured, he’s gonna get me one of the other guy’s guitars, spare guitars or something, or we’re gonna buy a decent enough guitar or ship mine over. But no, he went and changed the guitar pickup.
You have a North American headlining tour coming up. Do you think you’re getting close to a similar venue size and fan base here as in Europe?
We’re still behind, but you’re catching up fast. So unfortunately, we won’t be able to bring the full production of what we’re doing now in Europe, because those things are scaled for 15 to 20,000 people. So it’s still behind, but catching up real quick considering. We played a lot in America, but it took us a long time before we started touring in the first place.
In looking at your tour schedule, you’re playing shows in countries like Moldova and Kazakhstan that aren’t on most bands’ routing.
We have a rule. If we haven’t played there, a decent offer comes in, and if we don’t have a reason for not doing it, we have to do it. We don’t have to make money, just break even. We played El Salvador for the first time this year, we played New Zealand for the first time this year, and then Moldova and Kazakhstan.
When will the next Sabaton cruise happen?
I don’t know, actually. We couldn’t fit it in after the tour, which was the plan, but it’s also down to the shipping company. It’s a big time for cruises in Sweden before Christmas, because they have all these corporate events, and it’s popular to go on those. So we are looking into finding a replacement sometime. We don’t know when though, because the times they suggested is when we’re going to the U.S. So hopefully, hopefully we can squeeze one in in January.
You have a lot of 20 year album release anniversaries coming up. Do you have any plans to commemorate them, whether it be reissues or playing them live in their entirety?
I don’t know, we haven’t thought about that. We celebrated by chance last December our 25th anniversary, because we had the Sabaton Cruise on the day exactly 25 years after we performed as Sabaton for the first time. We sort of forgot that it’s 20 years since we started releasing albums. But that’s tricky, because our demo was released in 2001 then by the label in 2003, as they sold it as an album. And then Primo Victoria came in 2005, so 20 years. But then our first real album, came after Attero Dominatus in 2007, the Metalizer album. So when it comes to these release things, we’ve given up trying to keep track on how do we count.
Will you be doing new episodes for all the songs on this album for the Sabaton History YouTube channel?
Yes, that’s the plan. We’ve run into some problems though, because obviously when dealing with World War I, we’ve been dealing with stuff that you have archive material. We pay royalties for the episodes to those who own the rights to a film from World War II or whatever it is. And there are some stuff recorded for a lot of things that are earlier as well, where you have reenactments or film clips you could use. But for this one, there are so many where there is no material. So we don’t know how to do it really. Going the AI route is something we want to avoid to the extent it’s possible, but having an illustrator or animator would be out of the scope for the budget for a YouTube episode. Sure, we could probably find something re-enacted from Caesar’s era maybe, because he’s such a well-documented person. But how do we find anything about Senusret III from ancient Egypt? That’s not gonna happen.
What was your reaction to Ozzy Osbourne’s recent passing?
That was sad, but it’s not like it was a surprise, considering how he was struggling with his health for such a long time. And his own tours have been rescheduled or postponed, and then they moved back home and everything. So unfortunately I couldn’t go (to the final concert), but I saw the stream. But I was thinking while watching that stream that I don’t think he’s got too long left. But little did I think that he’d be dead within weeks. So sad, but to be honest, was really happy that he got to do a proper goodbye the way he wanted it.
(interview published October 15, 2025)
Watch Sabaton – “Templars” Video
