Bassist Pär Sundström and guitarist Chris Rörland recentyl spoke with BraveWords about the making of the band's latest album, The Great War. Following is an excerpt from the forthcoming feature story.

Bravewords: Were there specific plans for the music in mind for The Great War, like doing things differently compared to (previous album) The Last Stand?

Chris: "Not really. We just write songs in the moment. I think The Great War is very different from the last album. It's still a Sabaton record but there are some new influences. This is the first album where so many of us in the band were involved in the songwriting. I wrote three songs with Joakim (Brodèn), Tommy (Johansson / guitars) and Joakim wrote 'A Ghost In The Trenches', and Thobbe (Englund / former guitarist) and Joakim wrote 'Fields Of Verdun'. And we also had an outside songwriter, which we've never had before; Viktor (Carlsson / guitars) from Follow The Cipher. Joakim and Ken (Kängström / guitars) from Follow The Cipher have written songs together before but he was busy, so Viktor showed him some ideas and it became the title track of the album."

Pär: "The album is very strong when it comes to heavy metal hits. It has several of them. There are a few songs that really stick out... 'The Future Of Warfare', 'The End Of The War To End All Wars', and 'The Attack Of The Dead Men'. And the rest are real fist-pumping heavy metal hits. I think we have more of those on The Great War than we've ever had because normally the albums contain more epic songs. This is more straightforward. We had a bit of an issue because we thought we were lacking a couple songs, thinking it wasn't epic enough, but when the last song was done it was, 'Okay, we're epic again...' (laughs). The album has a good balance."

Watch for the feature story, coming soon.

Sabaton's new album, The Great War, landed at #1 on the official German charts. The band has issued the following statement: "From denial to the top. The story of Sabaton in Germany started with a distributor who refused to release our first album, Primo Victoria, because they considered Sabaton to be too controversial for the German music industry. Today YOU proved them all wrong. Thank you German fans for being so damn loyal all these years."

The Great War is available in various formats:

- CD-Digi (History Edition) incl. narrated parts in addition to the album tracks
- CD (Album Edition)
- 2CD Earbook (Album + History Edition)
- 180g LP in various colors (History Edition)
- 180g LP in various colours (Album Edition)
- 3CD/3LP Box (The Great Box Edition) includes: Earbook incl. “The Soundtrack To The Great War” CD,  regular, History & Soundtrack LPs [180g, green], one out of 11 Great War propaganda posters [chosen at random], postcards, emblem, poem on sheet) – limited to 1000

The Great War tracklisting:

"The Future Of Warfare"
"Seven Pillars Of Wisdom"
"82nd All The Way"
"The Attack Of The Dead Men"
"Devil Dogs"
"The Red Baron"
"Great War"
"A Ghost In The Trenches"
"Fields Of Verdun"
"The End Of The War To End All Wars"
"In Flanders Fields"

"Great War" video:

"The Red Baron" lyric video:

“Fields Of Verdun” video:

"Bismarck" video:

(Photo - Tallee Savage)