ONE TANK. 20,000 PEOPLE. A FUCKLOAD OF AMMO
You feel a tank long before you see it, and you hear it long before that. It starts with a distant industrial grind, which soon becomes a low-level physical tremor in your ankles. As it nears, the clanking and rumbling increases, physically shaking the ground until it feels like this weapon of destruction is right on top of you, even though it might still be 20 or 30 metres away.
It’s impossible to comprehend what World War I German soldiers in the trenches of the Somme thought when the British army first deployed 32 of these armoured behemoths on September 15, 1916. Or perhaps it isn’t: the overriding emotions would have been bafflement followed by sheer terror, presumably followed by the feeling of being pounded into oblivion.
More than a century later, even a single tank still has the power to inspire awe. In fairness, it’s not often that you see one rumbling through the backstage area of an outdoor gig, parting a crowd of people – several of whom are dressed in assorted period World War I costumes – and churning up dust in its wake. A man with a clipped mohawk and a bullhorn moustache watches on with pride.
“Looks fucking impressive doesn’t it?” he says. Mr Mohawk is Joakim Brodén, singer and co-commander-in-chief of the five-man army that is Sabaton. “Apparently it can still fire shells. Can you imagine any other band doing this?”
No, is the simple answer. But then other bands aren’t Sabaton. The Swedes have turned the marriage of metal and militaria into some serious musical and commercial firepower, a 14-year campaign that has seen successive territories fall to its might: Scandinavia, Poland, Russia, the Benelux countries, Germany. This summer the band will headline the Bloodstock festival, bringing down the last row of defences in one of the few countries that has resisted their onslaught.
Today, Sabaton have set up base in the city of Pilsen in the Czech Republic. In less than
