Livgardet

It is no secret that Sabaton has been seriously declining in quality in recent years. Both the Last Stand and the Great War were fairly mediocre retreads of what the band already did on Heroes except with worse production, even more predictable hooks, bland guitar work, and heavily processed vocals-to the point where I think a program like 15.ai could replicate them well. They were never the most original band on the planet (far from it), but at the very least I could consider them undeniably "metal" on their earlier records, and they had some decent riffs and anthems back then. I still have been periodically checking on the group in the hope that they will veer away from their modern "pop-metal" sound, and so I delved into "Livgardet" figuring that it would be just like the last two records, but, oh boy, do we have a real treat here on our hands.

"Livgardet," for all intents and purposes, is a hymn. It's slow and balladesque, uplifting, has some church organ, and contains very little metal at all. Now, I do actually enjoy hymns; they can sound great in a church setting with a choir that knows how to sing and a properly resonant building that gives the songs the atmosphere and sonority required for them to be properly powerful. Sabaton just can't replicate this. I kind of like Joakim Broden's rougher baritone vocals. They work rather well in the context of metal and especially with his band, at least before they started excessively producing his voice. What I don't enjoy hearing though is Joakim Broden butchering a Psalm. He does not have the prowess or talent to sing lead vocals in this genre and impress at all; only the choirs save him from his mediocrity, and are by far the best part of the song. It isn't good when the only highlight of your band's song are the backing choirs you hired and not any part of the band itself. The chorus attempts to be grand and upright, but it lacks memorability. The backing instruments are hardly even relevant here. The guitars do absolutely nothing of note except for playing basic power chords and chugs. Sabaton is pretty much at the same point as Nightwish in their musical development where the guitars are essentially just "there," providing no satisfactory riffs and are complacent with being background noise. The obligatory melodic guitar solo is thrown into the song, but why even do it in a song like this? It's completely out of place. This isn't even close to metal, and can barely even be construed as rock for that matter; The solo does not fit. Some generic keyboard synths shadow Broden during the verses, but otherwise do nothing else of note. The drums and bass are negligible. Along with the guitars, they are made more prominent as the song continues in an attempted progression from levity to heaviness, but it really adds nothing to the song and seems forced.

I would have at least given Sabaton some accolades for doing something a little different (which they barely do anymore), but they didn't write the damn song on their own. Others have pointed out that they ripped off "Fairest Lord Jesus," originally "Schönster Herr Jesu," which is a German hymn which first appeared in 1842. I don't necessarily have an issue with deriving pieces of a song from traditional tunes or prayers, but it is extremely lazy on the part of the band to just take that hymn and slap on their trademark lyrical approach. In some ways I see it as being pretty disrespectful to the original composer to turn a hymn into something like this. This isn't as bad as making happy-go lucky ditties about a war which killed 20 million people and ravaged their economies, of course, but that doesn't make it alright. Sabaton's version of the "Fairest Lord Jesus" is about the Swedish Royal Guard. This isn't the worst choice of a topic to transform the canticle into (just think, this song could have appeared on the Great War), but I do not understand why Sabaton is yet again going back to Swedish history. They already did this back when they were a better band on Carolus Rex, and I would rather they would be more original (again, I know this is Sabaton I am talking about, but still). Their whole lyrical gimmick of war and its various components has gotten extremely stale by this point.

I am unhappy with Sabaton. At one point I considered them one of my favorite bands, and it is particularly infuriating that they cannot seem to recover from their compositional low-point of the Last Stand. When the lineup imploded around Carolus Rex, it seems that those in the band who wanted to make actual metal albums are in Civil War now. I can't say that they are exactly the best band around, but their music recalls old Sabaton much more than what modern Sabaton does. Unfortunately, the fans of this band are still eating up this material and parading them around as if they somehow are the best of the power metal genre. They already lost the "power" a few albums back, and now it seems they are on the cusp of completely losing the "metal."