Military History + Metal = ??

[SidewinderINC]

last year I was headed over to belgium for my first visit to Graspop Metal Meeting, and before I went I listened to a few of the bands I'd never heard of that were playing there...

One was a sweedish band called Sabaton, who I liked the look of as they were all dressed up like soldiers in their band photo.
I took a listen and was blown away by the music, and then on listening more the lyrics started to stand out and I realised they were all about different battles/wars in recent military history. I saw them again at this years GMM, and I'm off to belgium and holland to see them in november (as well as their london gig )

Here's a run down of what each of their songs are about..

Album: Primo Victoria

# Primo Victoria" – 4:10 - About D-Day of Operation Overlord.
# "Reign of Terror" – 3:51 - About Operation Desert Storm and Saddam Hussein.
# "Panzer Battalion" – 5:09 - About the 2003 Iraq War.
# "Wolfpack" – 5:55 - About the Battle of the Atlantic, specifically Wolfpack Hecht's attack on convoy ONS-92.
# "Counterstrike" – 3:48 - About the Six-Day War.
# "Stalingrad" – 5:18 - About the Battle of Stalingrad.
# "Into the Fire" – 3:25 - About the Vietnam War.
# "Purple Heart" – 5:07 - About the recipients of the award the Purple Heart.

Album: Attero Dominatus

# "Attero Dominatus" – 3:43 - About the Battle of Berlin.
# "Nuclear Attack" – 4:10 - About Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
# "Rise of Evil" – 8:19 - About the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler.
# "In the Name of God" – 4:06 - About the War on Terror and Osama bin Laden
# "We Burn" – 2:55 - About the Yugoslavian civil war
# "Angels Calling" – 5:57 - About World War I.
# "Back in Control" – 3:14 - About the Falklands War.
# "Light in the Black" – 4:52 - About the Peacekeeping forces of the UN.

Album: Art of War

# "Sun Tzu Says" – A short introduction to the album.
# "The Ghost Division" – The first real song on the album, about Rommel's tank division during the invasion of France.
# "The Art of War" – About the book by Sun Tzu.
# "40:1" – About The Battle of Wizna.
# "Unbreakable" – Also about The Art of War.
# "The Nature of Warfare" – An instrumental setup track.
# "Cliffs of Gallipoli" – This song is about the battle of Gallipoli in World War I.
# "Talvisota" – About the Finnish Winter War during World War II.
# "Panzerkampf" – On the The Battle of Kursk.
# "Union (Slopes of St. Benedict)" - A hymn about the battle of Monte Cassino during World War II.
# "The Price of a Mile" - On the Battle of Passchendaele and the senseless slaughters of World War I.
# "Firestorm" - This song corresponds with the chapter of The Art of War entitled "The Attack by Fire".

Most of them can be found on youtube as expected

A couple of the vids that stand out to me as being the best ones

Primo Victoria (pieced together from saving private ryan) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrJAwCBbnuc

The Price of a Mile (pieced together from band of brothers mostly)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9xrxeDIhv8



Hearing and feeling this music live is incredible, it's amazing how much feeling they put into some of the songs live.

Take a listen