SABATON Is Finalizing Details Of Upcoming Album

Spark TV, which is part of the Czech monthly magazine Spark, recently conducted an interview with vocalist Joakim Brodén of Swedish metallers SABATON. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On SABATON's follow-up to 2014's "Heroes" album:

Joakim: "We are actually just finalizing the details. I don't wanna say anything yet, because we can just change our minds in the last second; we've done that before. So I'm not trying to be secretive or anything. But I can promise everyone that as soon as we know and we know we started the recordings and most of the vocals are done, and me and Pär [Sundström, bass] and Chris [Rörland, guitar] and Thobbe [Englund, guitar] and Hannes [van Dahl, drums] can't change our minds, then we will let everyone know."

On whether the upcoming album will be a continuation of the lyrical themes covered on "Heroes":

Joakim: "No, not really. We were thinking about it, actually, because that was, for us, to research and to write the lyrics, that was one of the most interesting albums to do, from that point of view. And we tried, I think, two or three different themes, but we still couldn't get the same feeling, personally, as we did for 'Heroes'. We were actually considering doing that, but then we found a topic that… it's touching on the same subject, [but] a little bit different."

On whether SABATON's next CD will be about "evil guys" or villains:

Joakim: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We actually wanted to do that before, but our lovely record label didn't like that idea, and I can see the point in a way. Obviously, people in different places [have] different sensibilities about things. When we did 'Heroes', we wanted to also do a second CD that was called 'Commanders'. And in Sweden, it wouldn't be a big problem to put a song about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin… you know, get all the crazy guys in there. The problem could be, though, that in other parts of the world… I'm guessing it would probably okay in the Czech Republic; you seem to be quite easy about these things. But I'm guessing Germany, America, doing these things… also maybe Russia wouldn't like us digging into those things. And we wouldn't want to make people really sad or end up on a 'banned' list. It would be kind of stupid for us."

SABATON released a special, three-disc limited-edition deluxe version of "Heroes" in the U.S. and Canada in April 2015 via Nuclear Blast.

Limited to 5,000 copies, this deluxe edition includes two discs of live audio recorded on the 2014 Sabaton Cruise in addition to the original ten "Heroes" album tracks.