REVIEW: Sabaton - Legends

SABATON. Legends. How did we get here? To understand Legends is to understand what happened to this band in the years leading up to its release.

When Carolus Rex hit the power metal scene in 2012 it was shaken to its very foundation. Sweden’s SABATON had already earned a reputation with Attero Dominatus (and yes, the Latin remains indefensible), but Carolus Rex was where the vision cohered. The low-register vocals, the dense keyboard layers, the military themes delivered with staunch conviction, all of it locked into place. They were the loudest historians in metal. It told the story of the Swedish Empire’s rise and fall with the pomposity of an opera and the tact of a historical record. To this day, it stands as a masterpiece of maximalist power metal, an album that leaves no room for air, yet breathes all the same. From there, the band faced a fork in the road; evolve or entrench. They chose to move forward, although the SABATON sense of 'forward' meant doubling down on what gained them popularity. 2014’s Heroes narrowed the scope from empires to individuals. It’s an excellent record, packed with muscular riffs and heart-swelling hooks, yet the sense of majesty from Carolus Rex could not be replicated.

Still, consistency was never Sabaton’s hamartia. It was complacency.

Around this point, probably out of fear of becoming stagnant, they flirted with experimentation on The Last Stand. The most notorious of these experiments was The Lost Battalion, where they replaced the drums with the sounds of machine guns. It’s a decision that confounded fans, and seemed too 'far out'. The song itself works as a concept, even if it stumbles as an anthem. It’s catchy, clever, but strangely hollow, its novelty outpacing its potential for greatness. Then came Blood of Bannockburn, the first Sabaton song in major key, a song so inexplicably happy in tone that fans wondered if the band had started satirizing itself. The tonal whiplash was genuine. People wondered: “What were they thinking?”

When the full album arrived, the narrative solidified. The title track and Winged Hussars immediately drew attention. Both are quintessential SABATON ; sweeping, movielike, and revelling in their vivid imagery. The Last Stand recounts the Protestant sack of Rome in 1527, while Winged Hussars recounts the lifting of the siege of Vienna. They’re massive and shamelessly fun tracks. Yet they also introduced some of the more negative aspects of the future, such as gimmicky choruses and songs built around hooks rather than riffs. These songs also became instant meme material, appropriated by internet crusader LARPers who, naturally, missed the point entirely. SABATON’s curated grandeur, meant to evoke the tragedy and scale of history, warts and all, became fodder for online culture to remix and recycle to its whims.

Then came their World War I two-album detour, and something inside the machine got stuck. The motivation is there, but the execution reveals creative fatigue. It’s as if the band was drowning in its own hype, doomed to repeat the same battles a la Edge of Tomorrow. Songs began to repeat their predecessors with slight adjustments to make sure they weren’t overt derivatives; Steel Commanders borrows the main riff from Shiroyama, Seven Pillars of Wisdom mirrors The White Death, The Great War reworks Carolus Rex, 82nd All the Way uses parts from No Bullets Fly, and Stormtroopers recalls 1648. The patterns multiply until to the seasoned fan they become impossible to ignore. That’s not to say there aren’t good songs on those albums, but for every good song there’s two uninspired ones to contend with.

And so now we are up to speed with 2025’s Legends, with a new label and guitarist Thobbe Englund back in the saddle for the first time since The Last Stand, time to see if they have learned their lesson and can break out of their funk.

The album is a showcase of notable people throughout history, focusing on individuals or groups ranging from the west to the far east for the first time, which in itself is a huge step for the group who tend to keep things more euro-focused. Within the first few seconds of opening track Templars there are familiar contours of 1648, but then it spurls into a rousing hook, it has a nice choral flavour, and the ‘Deus Vult’ kiddies already love it, so it succeeds. No points for guessing what the next track, Hordes of Khan, is about. It’s a strange entry in the SABATON canon; a tonal departure from the band’s past concerns with mercy and humanity (No Bullets Fly or Christmas Truce for instance). Here, “no mercy is shown” is delivered with just as much vigour. The song itself is fine. A pretty straightforward heavy metal number, that doesn’t take much advantage of its setting. It seemed like there was a potential for more eastern instrumentation that wasn’t realised.

Next is A Tiger Among Dragons - talking personally a bit, I am a massive fan of the Chinese Three Kingdoms period, and had extremely high hopes for this one. Not only that, but to have a song about the flying general himself, the master of Red Hare, the terror of Hulao Gate, and the lord of Xiapi castle, Lü Bu, is amazing. This one is different, it’s actually more subdued than expected. If you were expecting a fast-paced ode to Lü Fengxian cutting his way through Cao Cao’s poor militia, then you’re mistaken. Staccato riffs, tactical pacing, a calculated sense of tension punctuated by pounding war drums. The band’s grasp of the subject matter feels tenuous (“A legend untold?” They do know this is the national epic of China, right?), but the gesture alone feels refreshing. It’s an enjoyably different romp with a slightly more progressive tint than we’ve seen for a very long time (and a jaw harp!).

Then comes Crossing the Rubicon, a keyboard-saturated song on Julius Caesar defying Pompey and… crossing the Rubicon, complete with “the die has been cast” references. The realm of Rome in metal is held firmly by Canadian death metallers EX DEO, so SABATON does not try to tread on their toes here. It’s unfortunately quite forgettable, with its grandiose tone never penetrating the armour to reach the heart. I, Emperor tackles the tale of the greatest general who ever lived, Napoleon Bonaparte. And it's about time too; what took you guys so long? This track thrives on a marching backbeat that trods around like an elephant. You can practically hear the map of Europe crumpling under the Grande Armée’s heels. Unfortunately, the lyrics reduce the most complicated general in history to a string of playground boasts, with zingers like: “I will conquer all/I will rule you/I’ll win… the war/I will destroy you/.” SABATON once made their name on specificity and visceral imagery to bring you closer to the action; dates, battles, place names, the thrill of detail, and the absence of that here feels like a departure from their ethos. It’s an overall simplistic song that lamentably doesn’t give l'Empereur the grandiose history lesson he deserves.  

Why on God’s green earth SABATON decided to give their high-intensity thrashy number to Joan of Arc of all people, I will never understand. Maid of Steel (pun intended) reimagines the maid of Orléans as a whirlwind of death to the Plantagenet interlopers, if you hadn’t heard of her before this song then you’d assume she was some kind of cyborg. Regardless, it is a Coat of Arms-ey speed metal feminist bonanza that’s over before you can even process what just happened. More of this pace in the future, please. The Impaler sounds like it came straight off of The Art of War, as it has inherited that same lumbering pace, although lyrically it’s much less like madlibs and seems like there’s an effort to tell more of a story here. Even though SABATON lauded the mass genocide of Genghis Khan in the previous tracks, here the act of impaling is seen as slightly more lamentable. The guitar solo here is also quite beautiful. It’s probably the best song on the album. Go figure.

The next song, Lightning at the Gates, describes the long march of Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca over the alps with his elephants to invade Rome in the 3^rd century BC. This one is possibly the most cannibalistic song they have ever released, with the main riff being a poorly hidden expy of Uprising mixed with Hearts of Iron, complete with “as the winter’s drawing near…”. It’s shameless, really, and the fans seem to be eating it up, but quite a few are noticing the similarities. This could have very easily come from a SABATON song generator, sounding altogether well-trodden and derivative. I speak as someone with a deep love for this band, brazen cannibalisations like this are hindering them from evolving their sound. The legend of Hannibal deserves better than this.

Things do not improve with the next song, The Duelist, about legendary Japanese Ronin duellist and author of the ‘Book of Five Rings’, Miyamoto Musashi. This is basically Saboteurs. Yeah, there are some differences, but down to the riffs and the structure, it’s essentially the same song with a different coat of paint. Another wasted potential for an amazing historical figure that probably won’t be revisited by them. I’m not mad, I’m disappointed. The next song, The Cycle Of Songs, is a bit of a doozy - a song about Senusret III, an obscure Egyptian ruler from the Twelfth Dynasty, known primarily for his campaigns against the Nubians. This is quite an odd choice. He’s not exactly a very well-known pharaoh, and to have a song this epic feels like the strangest creative choice on the album so far. To think, this could have been the Napoleon song. The result is surprisingly strong: towering riffs, an unexpectedly ripping guitar solo, and a sense of scale that feels natural. The entire affair is confounding. At least it’s one of the better songs on the album. Finally, Till Seger. The organ hums; the choir swells. Gustavus Adolphus returns, the Lion of the North, Der Löwe aus Mitternacht, and with him, a sense of circular closure. Like Ruina Imperii before it, it’s sung entirely in Swedish, the track deliberately recalls the motifs of that 2012 classic. It’s both homage and self-assessment. A poignant way of showcasing where the band is musically compared to many years ago.

To listen to Legends is to listen to a band that can’t seem to come to terms with their own power. Expansive in theme, conservative in sound, and intermittently brilliant in spite of itself. I’m sure that there will be a “history edition” of this album soon, maybe a web series detailing the history of each track. That’s all well and good. But the music comes first. And behind the historical veneer hides a deep creative inertia. It’s the sound of a group that understands exactly what it’s capable of, yet seems terrified of what might happen if it strays too far from the proven formula. There is nothing I want more in this world than for SABATON to succeed - they defined my teenage years and married my love of history and metal into some incredible material. To see them a decade later, still wading through the same sonic trench, invites a different kind of question: not how did they get here, but why are we still in the same trench? To take influence from yourself is not a bad thing at all, Sabaton could thrive not with bringing back riffs, but themes, returning to the sweeping epics in their more SAVATAGE-influenced days, or to resurrect the pulse-pounding monsters like Night Witches and Ghost Division. They could follow the same rediscovery arc as BLIND GUARDIAN, who recently reembraced their speed-metal roots with renewed vitality, perhaps they could revisit the blistering album pace of Coat of Arms. But Legends plays it too safe and too self-conscious. Its singles, the assumed centrepieces, are among the least inspired tracks the band has ever released. But oddly the songs that haven’t been released as singles seem to be the best ones. They may sound similar to their previous outputs, but moments on songs like The Impaler and A Tiger Among Dragons hint at a more progressive future for the Swedes if they committed to it.

Until the next one, I have hope. Hope that their best album is yet to release, And maybe, just maybe, they’ll have the courage to march toward it. After all, what’s the price of a mile?

Score: 6/10

Legends will be released on October 17th 2025 via Better Noise Music.

Words: Kiarash Golshani

Photos: Sabaton