[avatar user=”James” size=”50″ align=”left” /]Before Sabaton’s set at Bloodstock last week, I had the opportunity to chat to Joakim (Vocals) from Sabaton. We chatted about the last time they were here, the upcoming DVD and of course which tank they had with them.
Thanks to Sarah at Nuclear Blast for organising and Joakim for his time.
MT: You’re playing the main stage at the festival today. Are you excited for that?
Joakim: Yes. We’re actually really looking forward to it because last time we were here we had massive technical problems. Another band had fired up their wireless system without following the festival channel specifications. By the time we got that sorted, the stage manager had asked them to change to the correct channels. We had however changed to those channels that the band now occupied. That will be our interesting show for sure.
MT: The most recent album Heroes came out around a year ago. What’s the fan response like when you play the songs live?
Joakim: Very good. The first time you play songs live it takes time for us to work out how to translate it onto the stage. It’s not like we rehearse in camo pants and choreograph our moves so it takes us a while to get used to moving around for it. In general it’s been very good actually, particularly songs like “Night Witches”,” Resist and Bite” and “To Hell and Back”.
MT: Which tank have you brought with you today?
Joakim: I’m sorry to say I don’t remember. I think it’s Walter but I can’t swear on it. We have to send them out in all different directions. It’s not like we can freely choose which one we want. It’s not like we can have the tank in northern Finland and Barcelona the next day. They have met on a few occasions. Wacken Open air and Drovala festival in Sweden is where we had two tanks on stage.
MT: You played with an orchestra recently…?
Joakim: Yes that’s correct. A Swedish band went down to rehearse with Czech orchestra, which then played in Vienna. It was a bit of a mixup but very good fun. With everyone included, there were about 50 people on stage and 70 people in total. So getting that done with the tank and stage rises that we needed to make military was interesting. One of my secret pleasures during that show was running off stage during a guitar solo and waiting for the Orchestra to shit themselves when the pyro’s came on.
MT: Do you think you’d play with the orchestra again?
Joakim: I’d like to! It’s a bit of a bitch with the rehearsals and logistics of it all though. But I liked it. Especially the songs where the orchestra played against the band but it depends on the song. With a song like “Ghost Division”, the orchestra has to play with us because it’s a very driving song. However with a song like “Art of War” the orchestra can play against us as there’s a bit of room in there.
MT: You’re also recording your show in Falun for a live DVD. What made you decide to record Falun?
Joakim: Well we wanted to record the show back in 2008 but some drunken asshole fell over the recording equipment. We still have the audio, but the video is all scrambled. It’s a bit of a different thing to do. Our previous DVD, “Swedish Empire Live”, had over 600,000 people at the Woodstock festival in Poland. Then we also had the headline show in Gothenburg with 6000 people and the Oberhausen and London shows as well. We then thought “How the fuck do we top that?”. So we decided to do something different. We’re going to have a very special set-list and we’re going to have some Sabaton history in there as well.
MT: Thank you for your time!
