Bismarck

Alternate title: The adolescent male cult of the German military

"It’s a good thing you guys aren’t writing music, or it would suck." - Arsi "Hakita" Patala

So, Sabaton, the history-themed power metal that struck an unexplored niche within the metal scene, has written a song about the greatest battleship of the Kriegsmarine. I'll dissect the music first, then explain why the title is the way it is.

The music itself is your typical run-of-the-mill modern power metal; it sounds like a generic soundtrack for a generic wartime movie that was made to be Oscar-bait. It begins with a thin synth line that slowly builds up to the intro proper, where the guitars start playing, while Joakim's vocals make their appearance and begin the song proper. The rest of the song sounds really forgettable, and honestly, if it weren't for the subject matter, no one would give a shite about this song. Even the synths sound incredibly weak, and the solo is really sleep-inducing with how slow and powerless it sounds (probably a production issue), which is something you wouldn't do with a song writing about a ship as "heroic" as this piece of giant pinata, and was not helped by the fact that technical and fast solos were the norm in the more mainstream variant of modern power metal (thanks DragonForce for turning power metal into a shredfest; no, I'm serious).

Production-wise, being a band signed to Nuclear Blast and the subject matter being a walking embarrassment for naval vessels, it is befitting that the production of this song is utter garbage. The instruments are loud and without any dynamic range, which kills all the clarity within the instruments and makes it very unbearable for anyone who appreciates a good production, me included.

Regarding the title, the song came to be when Sabaton made a poll sometime around 2017 and asked which subject they should cover next, and unsurprisingly, Bismarck topped the polls. This is a problem because the internet is largely occupied by young adolescent males who have an affinity for the Nazis, aka the actual fucking bad guys who killed over 6 million people for their race and beliefs. And as a result, anything they ever made would be worshipped to hell just because they were the tools of the evil, despite being effectively a far inferior variant of what the UK and US could come up with when they were shitfaced drunk. And thus Sabaton has forever embarrassed themselves as the band that listened to their Wehraboo fans and sold out instead of staying true to themselves. I'd regard this as a far worse selling-out moment than when Cryptopsy released The Unspoken King.

You know what ship deserves a myriad of songs and praises for her career? The USS Enterprise (CV-6), the sole bulwark of the US Navy against the Imperial Japanese Navy for nine months, is the greatest warship of the 20th century. But given that this is Sabaton, I highly doubt I will give them a good score regardless.

"You cannot create a hero by force (Bismarck), but heroes can come from the most unexpected places (Enterprise)." - Me, probably someone out there might have created this quote before I did, and I'm not aware of it.

To the fellow degenerates who play Azur Lane, read this: Bismarck as a waifu is just a very watered-down version of Enterprise, and y'all are fucking hypocrites and should be branded Wehraboo at best and Neo-Nazis at worst for liking Bismarck and not Enterprise. I bet y'all would like a literal sack of shit if she is German and the alternate choice is a shipgirl from literally any other navy.