THE WAR WITHIN

Sabaton had just kicked off a 17-date tour of Russia when nations began to fall around them. If this was a war movie, there would have been a map of the world behind them covered in red lights gradually blinking out one by one.

As it was, Sabaton’s bassist, Pär Sundström, was sitting in a hotel bar every night, glued to the news on his mobile phone. It was March 2020, and countries around the world were closing their borders as a contagious new virus named Covid-19 swept the globe. Yet here in Russia, life was carrying on as normal.

“The government had stated there was no virus in Russia, so if we’d gone home we’d have faced a shitload of costs,” says Pär. “We were landing in new cities and the airports were full of fans. Everybody was like, ‘Is this OK?’”

As the man who essentially manages Sabaton, Pär was the one people were coming to and asking what the hell was going on. There was little he could do