Sabaton – 'The War To End All Wars' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Stormtroopers

2. Dreadnought

3. The Unkillable Soldier

4. Soldier Of Heaven

5. Hellfighters

6. Race To The Sea

7. Lady Of The Dark

8. The Valley Of Death

9. Christmas Truce

10. Versailles

Sabaton are a band who have managed to hone their sound down to a fine art. They have, after all, been around for more than two decades at this point, and it’s no surprise that this album (which is a sequel to their previous album, “The Great War”) is both well made and full of some absolutely brilliant work.

I’m not going to give you a track by track breakdown of the album – mostly because I’m guessing you already know if a Metal album themed around World War I is going to be your cup of tea or not. But I do want to highlight a couple of tracks as being absolute standouts for me. The first is “The Unkillable Soldier”. This was released as one of the singles from the album, and I can absolutely see why you’d pick it. It starts off with a bang and gallops along with a sense of purpose and excitement. It's also only just over four minutes long, and feels the absolute perfect length. The other one is “Hellfighters”. I’m sure it’s not intentional, but the opening riff makes me think of the original version of Doom (the videogame) as there was a piece of music in that which sounds similar – it just puts me in an absolutely brilliant mood for the rest of the song. Obviously when I say “a brilliant mood”, the songs are lyrically dark as you would expect, but these are still songs that you can headbang along with no problem at all.

Another single from this album was “Christmas Truce”, which I like and feels a bit proggy, with the incorporation of traditional festive musical themes throughout. It’s not quite as strong as the other two I have mentioned, but it does show some variety from the rest of the album, which should always be applauded.

Interestingly, this album also came out in a “History Edition”, which includes an extra track at the start (Sarajevo) and various bits of narration on many of the tracks to lend them some context. Which is actually a really nice touch as I remember very little of my GSCE history around World War I.

For me, the history edition is great if you are going to listen to the entire album end to end, as the narrator has a very expressive voice and really helps to coalesce the entire thing. Alternatively, if you are picking tracks to drop into a playlist, I’d recommend the normal edition, unless your playlist usually has narration popping up halfway through!

This album is great. It’s a great Sabaton album, it’s a great Metal album, and since there are multiple different versions of it (there’s also a Symphonic one that I haven’t listened to much yet) you are sure to find the version that suits you. This is definitely an album to enjoy time and time again.