The War to End All Wars

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Yet another abomination by Sabaton: a personified joke gone way too far. One album about WWI was not enough for them, so they decided to make another one. Unfortunately and amazingly, it is much worse that 2019's The Great War. That is most certainly an accomplishment, considering how awful The Great War was.

This album is exactly what you expected it to be if you've heard The Last Stand or The Great War. Sterile, half-assed power-pop bullshit made for 12-year-olds who think that Call of Duty is the best thing in the entire world. Pseudo-epic chord progressions, hooks and song structures that have gone horribly stale long, long before this album came out. Songs that rip off and make a parody of the most banal elements of Gamma Ray, Manowar, Blind Guardian and many other other old school heavy/power metal bands, and even Sabaton's own older material (not as if that's anything new). Powerless guitars which are mostly there because they're supposed to be for this album to be considered metal. Plastic-sounding keyboards which make already shitty songs infinitely shittier. Brodén's mediocre vocals which become more and more grating the more you listen to them (and considering that I've listened to every Sabaton's studio album minimally three times each, including this one, his voice is absolutely unbearable) and are made even worse with the absurd vocal layering that immediately induce an intense migraine. If you've heard any of the last few Sabaton albums, you've already heard this one.

Alright, so the vocals are horrible. What's worse than that is that Brodén's voice completely dominates every single song on display here. Some songs start with a guitar or a keyboard riff that is played once or twice at best, before Brodén overshadows whatever is happening with his sub-par performance. Seriously, it's like he's actively trying to make a complete idiot out of himself (the worst example being The Unkillable Soldier). Worse yet, the vocal lines and hooks are infantile to the point of being downright insulting to the listener's intelligence and maturity. Not even Timeless Miracle is this childish.

What's even more worse are the awful lyrics, as well as their equally awful delivery. Contrary to what Sabaton fans and apologists want you to think, Sabaton never had good lyrics, and this album is no exception (Hill 3234 has easily the worst lyrics ever written, just for the chorus alone). Sabaton has overdone the subject of war to the point that it's no longer possible to take it seriously. Even Deicide is less annoying with constantly writing songs about how Christianity is bad than Sabaton is with constantly writing songs about war. After I listened to The Great War for the last time, I thought to myself: "If I hear Sabaton say war ONE more time, I will lose it." And when I saw the name of the new album, I was completely dumbstruck. Any miniature fragment of respect I had for them had instantly vanished into thin air at that moment.

But, back to the lyrics themselves. As I said, they were never good, and they aren't good here. Their sloppy and haphazard rhyming and the awful vocal delivery, as well as the words themselves, are guaranteed to give you an existential crisis (assuming you have a 3-digit IQ). Let's take a look at The Unkillable Soldier, for example:

"Never die, shot through the eye
Never surrender however they try
How they try, shot through the eye
He'll never die"

Dear goodness... I don't even know what to say. There are many more similarly cringeworthy lyrics on this album, and every time I hear one, my faith in humanity weakens drastically.

This leads us to likely the worst problem with this album, and the worst problem with Sabaton itself. Critics and detractors of Sabaton often argue that, by combining childish and upbeat music with lyrics about real-life conflicts, they glorify war. I cannot agree with that. It's not that Sabaton glorifies war as much as they make a complete farce out of it. Sabaton and their fans claim that they bring many lesser known battles and soldiers popularity and recognition they deserve, but their absolutely childish and inept execution just turns everything into a total parody of itself. They take all the pain, torment and suffering all those soldiers have gone through and turn it into a bunch of cheery, singalong tunes that are more fitting as a soundtrack to a cartoon for toddlers than they are as a depiction of the lyrical topics of the songs. By doing this, not only do they not honor the soldiers, they actively insult them and make fun of the horrors they have gone though. Utterly disgusting.

Even if we ignore the lyrics and the image, there is nothing worthwhile to be found on this album. If you've been listening to metal for a few months at the very least and know what earlier Sabaton albums sound like, you'll know that a lot of the material here is recycled, if not outright plagiarized. The atmospheric break at 2:04 of Stormtroopers is a ripoff of Accept's Balls to the Wall. Soldier of Heaven sounds like a plasticized, lamer version of WASP's Arena of Pleasure, with a chorus indifferentiable from the one of The Last Stand. Hellfighters has that main riff that sounds a lot like Hammerfall's Hearts on Fire, and would be the only decent song here if it wasn't ruined by Brodén's vocals and unimaginative songwriting. Race to the Sea is Sabaton's yet another failed attempt at writing Holy Diver/Warriors of the World United, and in general sounds like a cheap copy of The Last Stand. The Valley of Death is an even lamer version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Christmas Truce is Sabaton's most laughable and pathetic attempt at displaying emotion since The Ballad of Bull. Sarajevo and Versailles are supposed to be some sort of intro and outro tracks to the "epic journey" that this album is supposed to be, but with the lame narration and the horrible chorus, they sound like they were rejected from Queensrÿche's American Soldier. Yes, they are that bad.

This album and this band are completely and utterly worthless, and giving this album anything above 0 is an insult to myself as a reviewer, to you as a reader of this review, to anyone who has heard Sabaton and understand why they suck and to every soldier, battle and event sung on this album. I was considering giving this album 1 or 2 points because Johansson's solos and leads are good, if not anything spectacular, but I changed my mind because this is the 10th album of the same old shit over and over again, expect it's even worse than any of the previous albums. The material on this album is so stale and done to death that Johansson's soloing, no matter how good, cannot salvage it. Whatever worth this album may theoretically possess is rendered null when you take into consideration that Sabaton has been doing this shit for almost 20 years with no intention to either stop or make any meaningful improvements. They have no worth as either artists, entertainers or historians. More than likely, they keep writing album after album of the same stale, recycled crap for the sole purpose of making money. They are making a living out of parodying and downright mocking historical tragedies, crimes and disasters. If that is not absolutely revolting, tell me what is.

Let us hope that The War to End All Wars will be the Sabaton album to end all Sabaton albums because at this point, this is neither funny, sad nor pitiful. It's insulting and disgusting, and should not be supported by anyone.