Sabaton: 'There will be some surprises which will make people sit up'

Are you looking forward to playing over here again?

We are looking forward to this a lot. It’s the pinnacle of what we’ve been working on for a very long time. This tour has been in the making for quite some time, so waiting to kick it off in Leeds makes us feel like kids waiting for Christmas. We are extremely excited about this. There`s going to be so many emotions set loose when we finally come over to play.

Your first night in the UK is in Leeds on April 14 at the First Direct Arena. This is your first time back in Leeds since 2006 when you played the Metropolitan University. How are you going to make up for the lost time?

We’ll be playing to a near full arena this time so it`s going to be amazing. I think our first show in Leeds only had a few people so this time it`ll be very different.

What have you got line-up in terms of the setlist?

We’ll be pretty much focused on the last album, ‘The War To End All Wars’ and the previous album ‘The Great War’ so there is a focus on the First World War but there will be some surprises which will make people sit up. It’s going to be so cool. As the tour actually starts in Leeds, nobody will know the setlist until we play it in Leeds so I will love to see the expression on the fans’ faces when they see what we have for them in the show.

On your last tour there was a First World War theme to your stage show with the sandbags, ramparts, gun turrets, barbed wire, the Red Baron’s Fokker tri-plane as the keyboard stand and a big tank as a drum riser. How are you going to top that on this tour?

The short answer is more of the good. On the last tour we had five trucks but on this one we have 11 so I think that shows the scale of the show. We have 161 people travelling with us so it’s a huge production. It will be an exciting show. One thing that I can say though is that we will be bringing in more theatre and actors into the show. This will help us to visualise the topics we are singing about. Visually it’ll be a different type of show to what we’ve done before.

You’re joined on this tour by Babymetal and Lordi – that’s a great line-up for the fans. Whose idea was it to put that package together?

The idea was mine. We’ve toured with Babymetal in Japan and we are very good friends with the management of the band. Sabaton is a very entertaining band and we have an open minded audience and Babymetal have a lot of energy and have a great show so I thought they’d work great. With Lordi, we have a long relationship with them. They invited us to open for them in Sweden right after they won the Eurovision Song Contest. We’ve often talked about doing a tour together. Sabaton puts on a show. Now we have three bands bringing a show. It’s a great combination and it will be a great evening for all the people coming to the show. Get there early, you’ll not want to miss any of this.

There is a big military history thread running right though your lyrics. What was it that first attracted you to military history?

The interest has always been there. When I was younger I loved Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy but as I got older I realised that reality was far more interesting. The real stories always gripped me in a different way than those which were fictional. We decided that military history was somewhere that we’d like to go so we could tell stories from the real world.

Your last two albums ‘The Great War’ and ‘The War To End All Wars’ are focussed on the First World War. Most people will be aware of the Christmas Truce and the Treaty Of Versailles but you go much further than that. Is it important to you dig deeper and write about some of the lesser known events and characters.

Yes, it is. We’re always looking for an interesting story to tell and sometimes that involves events and characters who are not as well known as others.

‘The Unkillable Solder’ is about a fascinating character Adrian Carton De Wiart. You could almost write a whole album about his escapades?

Yes, we could and that could be done outside of the World War One topic as well. It was an exciting story and we needed to do it but it needed a specific type of music to fit that story. We needed a sort of heroic sound with a positive vibe.

‘Hellfighters’ which is about The Harlem Hellfighters is another fascinating subject. Not a lot of people know that there was an all African-American Regiment who fought on the front line at a time of terrible segregation. Is it important to you to highlight and reflect on issues such as this?

These guys required a top song and they got it.

What war documentary can you recommend people to watch?

‘The Man Who Saved The World’ is a live action documentary and is a fascinating story about a Soviet commander who prevented a nuclear conflict. It`s one of the scariest, most emotional things you can see so you shouldn`t watch that if you want to feel in a good mood but it`s a great story.

Once the UK shows are over, where do you head next?

The tour goes through Europe for a month and a half and we have a festival date at the start of the summer to wrap it up and then we start working on the next record.

Sabaton play at the First Direct Arena, Leeds on Friday April 14.