Thanks a lot, feels good to talk to a true fan.

I am Pär, the bassplayer. But since the start I have also been the manager of the band and I still handle lots of management work for the band. I also design tshirts, write announcements and also write songs.

Sabaton is my life, it takes 100% of all my time and I do not do anything else. If I have a spare moment I go to the pub.

My freind took me down to his basement which was full with heavy metal posters and guitaramps. He played some Iron Maiden riffs on his electric guitar and I was sold.

I had a bassguitar when I was 14, it was a red, very ugly, kid size, shitty bass which my parents gave me. I never used it as I borrowed a bassguitar from school instead. Later I traded that bass and gave some money in between and got myself my first REAL bassguitar which was a Aria Pro II 5 string that I still have.

I was already playing with Daniel Mullback in a old band. I knew a guy called Johan since I was a child and we always wanted to play together. He introduced me to Rikard and together we started Aeon, which would later be Sabaton.

I always wanted to write songs about things that really matters. I think reality beats fiction always and since we have such dark times in our past there are lots of inspiration. Both me and Joakim are great fans of history and we decided back in 2004 during the recording of Primo Victoria that this was a good idea.

First it felt strange to win a breakthrough award after 11 years as a band. But since it was from UK it felt absolutely amazing. Everyone said we would fail in UK and that UK was not for our music. But with the award all such doubts were gone.
I thought the award would go to Volbeat as they are a much more cred band in the world then Sabaton.

We repeat it again, haha. Once we are done touring we will start right off to make a new album and when its released we will tour even more.

We have started with some ideas, but not much is completed yet. We still dont have a theme either.

The year was crazy for us, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Judas Priest and Accept. They are basicly all legendary heroes for us and to play with them is amazing. Over the years we have built up a reputation around the band that we are never a problem and we are really nice guys. I think this helps. At least Scorpions explained that they normally dont have supports since most bands in the world cannot handle being support for Scorpions but we got along perfect.

Depends on mood, but Cliffs of Gallipoli is always a hit.

The live album was recorded on the Sabaton cruise, a ship between Sweden and Finland in december 2010 as part of the World War Tour.

It was never meant to be recorded there, we recorded the whole tour without any purpose since we anyway carried equipment for it with us on tour. Then, a couple of months after the tour we sat down and started to think about what we should do with over 60 live recordings. Our label wanted to release a live-CD and many fans had requested a live-CD.

The upcoming live CD box set is a real killer. There are two CD´s where the first one was recorded on the Sabaton cruise and the second CD was recorded at various locations during th World War Tour. Then there is a DVD which is the full concert from the first issue of the Sabaton festival Rockstad:Falun which was in 2008 and also all the music videos from Coat of Arms including the previously unseen Coat of Arms video. As if this was not enough its packed in a really great booklet.

Thanks for this interview Matt. Stay Metal!