Sabaton Legends review: If you've ever found the biggest power metal band on Earth too war-obsessed, they've got something new for you

Few bands in modern metal have carved out a niche as singular as Sabaton’s. Now more than two decades, 10 albums and four billion streams deep, the Swedes stand as metal’s great historians, chronicling war’s brutality, but also the courage it can engender.

Where 2019’s The Great War and 2022’s The War To End All Wars were anchored in WWI, the band’s new album, Legends, broadens the scope. Instead of focusing on a single conflict, it spans centuries, with the scale and ceremony only Sabaton can muster.

With founding duo Joakim Brodén and Pär Sundström still at the helm, and former guitarist Thobbe Englund back in the fold, Sabaton enter their 11th chapter – their debut for Better Noise Music – bigger than ever, riding multi-platinum success, sold-out arena tours, and gearing up for a 22-date orchestral European run.

It’s an album that asks not only what legends are made of, but whether Sabaton themselves have now claimed that title. For anyone who’s ever found Sabaton a little too war-obsessed, Legends offers a detour from the trenches. Their 11th album raids history with abandon, roaming from Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc to Mongol horsemen, crusading Templars, Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi and ancient Egyptian pharaohs, each song blown up into the kind of thunderous anthem only Sabaton can muster.

Opener Templars announces that sprawling shift with choirs and strings swelling to cathedral-level grandeur, with Thobbe stepping into the spotlight on guitar. It’s the sound of Sabaton relishing their own scale. Hordes Of Khan hurtles forward at full tilt, as relentless as Genghis himself, while Crossing The Rubicon is Sabaton in classic mode: solid, familiar, immediately recognisable.

Never ones to fall short, the Swedes bind Legends together with unwavering power and pomp. A Tiger Among Dragons, a tribute to 2nd-century Chinese General, Lü Bu, unites percussive stomp with subtle electronics, before unfurling a chorus designed for arenas. I, Emperor is just as persuasive, seeing Joakim momentarily inhabiting Napoleon himself before choirs crash in behind him. Elsewhere, Maid Of Steel whips forward on guitars, its interest lying more in subject matter – the indomitable Joan of Arc – than in sonic invention, while The Cycle Of Songs veers into a disco-inflected gallop.

The closing Till Seger is sung in Swedish, its organ-led intro paving the way for a homage to native 17th-century king, Gustavus Adolphus. For fans who don’t share the language, it risks clouding the clarity of the concept, but it’s an undeniably proud flourish. If there is a standout, it’s Impaler, a hulking slab of menace that evokes Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir in its heft, Joakim dipping into a near-guttural register while NWOBHM guitar licks slash overhead.

Lightning At The Gates and The Duelist fall shorter, perhaps leaving listeners aching for a Primo Victoria Mk II. But across the record, the sheer armoury of choirs, riffs and orchestration reinforces Sabaton’s identity.

Legends doesn’t reinvent the band, but it does stretch their battlefield into something closer to a cinematic universe, with them still marching at the front of power metal’s ranks.

Legends is out now via Better Noise. Sabaton are on the cover of the new Metal Hammer. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.