SABATON's JOAKIM BRODÉN: 'We've Never Had A Huge Dip Or A Huge Rise' In Our Popularity

In a new interview with Cassius Morris, vocalist Joakim Brodén of Swedish metallers SABATON spoke about the band's growing popularity, particularly in North America, where SABATON just launched a headlining tour with support from POP EVIL and WINGS OF STEEL. Joakim said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'm very happy, and I feel fortunate about it because we've never had a huge dip or a huge rise. I mean, yeah, maybe something happened and we got a bit of a hype in Poland when we did [the song] '40:1' [which became a massive cultural phenomenon in Poland by turning the heroic, lesser-known World War II Battle of Wizna into a celebrated national anthem], and there was a rise there, but it was never global. So, we never went from 100 people per show to 4,000 people per show. We always had this gradual rise — in general. Might be a slight dip, but then coming back up. And, yeah, we've been really fortunate that way. We've been able to grow organically, as an organization with the people around us. It's not only us — it's actually more people who are not in the band on tour than in the band. [Laughs] So you need a production manager, sound designers, all of this, that we have with us. So that has grown organically as well as, yeah, us as persons. Nobody got taken as a 17-year-old and put in front of 10,000 people and, like, 'Oh, shit.' So, uh, yeah, from that perspective, I'm really happy about it."

He continued: "Sometimes, back in the day especially, we wished it would've been a bit faster, because it was a long and hard journey the first 10 years. However … I don't think I would change very much, actually… Also I know a lot of things now that I didn't know back then. I mean, we didn't have a management. We were doing things our own way, for good and bad. It's brought us a lot of advantages and a lot of disadvantages, 'cause we never did it the regular business way. We did it our way. Sometimes that was the best way. Sometimes that was actually the worst way of doing it. [Laughs] But, yeah, slowly but surely, we've been moving ahead... And, yeah, these days I know maybe why it didn't go faster when we tried that and that 10 years ago because it was fucking bad management."

Earlier this month, SABATON released a new version of the band's 2025 hit "Templars" featuring Leigh Kakaty of platinum-certified, chart-topping rock powerhouse POP EVIL. The song is now available on all DSPs and digital download providers via Better Noise Music.

The new single arrived on the heels of "Yamato", in which SABATON partnered with the popular online video game "World Of Warships" and its developer Wargaming. Since its release in March, the single continues to buzz with north of 7.5 million Spotify streams, while the music video has tallied 4.6 million views alone, landing looks at Blabbermouth, Metal Injection, NME and more. Meanwhile, Louder raved, "'Yamato' is yet another stirring, oh-so-epic tune to be added to their arsenal."

The band had previously partnered with World Of Warships and Wargaming for "Bismarck" in 2019. Among the most popular tunes in SABATON's catalog, the latter has garnered more than 124 million Spotify streams to date, while the gripping music video has tallied over 111 million views and counting. Landing plugs from Metal Insider, Blabbermouth, Ghost Cult magazine and more, Revolver magazine praised, "SABATON has made a career by writing kickass hooks about extremely specific moments of military history, and between Wargaming's world-class attention to detail and the band's artillery nerdom, this was a match made in heaven."

SABATON also dropped its latest full-length offering, "Legends", at the end of 2025. Beyond racking up nearly 200 million total streams, it incited the applause of Kerrang! who rated it 4/5 and raved, "SABATON do one thing, and after 11 albums there doesn't appear to be an off switch. But by Odin, they do that one thing better than anyone else." Louder marveled at how "it does stretch their battlefield into something closer to a cinematic universe, with them still marching at the front of power metal's ranks."

SABATON's "Legends On Tour" North American tour kicked off on September 23 in Halifax, Nova Scotia and will wrap on December 12 in Fort Lauderdale. The band will also bring "The Legendary Tour Part 2" to Europe in April 2027, following the huge success of the first tour that saw them sell out enormous shows at London's O2 Arena and Manchester's Co-op Live.

Photo credit: Jens De Vos