Music Review : Sabaton Call to Arms : Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock, Alternative Rock Metal, CD Album Music Review

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Sabaton: Call to Arms

Melodic/Heavy/Power (War) Metal

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Nuclear Blast
www.myspace.com/sabaton
www.sabaton.net
Review: Craig Hartranft, 05.31.2010

Sabaton, the masters of 'war metal,' return with a Call to Arms, now signed with Nuclear Blast. Excepting their first release, Metalizer, Sabaton has continued the theme of telling the tales of true war, usually specific battles and often from the WWII era, through melodic power metal. By this album, Sabaton have become quite efficient and equally entertaining in their craft. This time around they asked their fans to submit battles for Sabaton to put music. Doing a little research, and I hope I've gotten these correct, here are some the battles put to song.

The title track, Call to Arms, refers to Greece repelling Italy in 1940. Midway is obviously about the epic sea battle in the Pacific theatre. Uprising tells of the Polish revolt against the Nazi invaders. The Final Solution refers, of course, to Hitler's insane and murderous attempt to blame and then exterminate the entire Jewish population in Germany (and elsewhere). Saboteurs tells the tale of the Allied attempt to infiltrate and defeat the Nazi regime from within. Later, the last two songs, White Death and Metal Ripper, appear not to have the battle motif, but I could be missing it. Actually, the latter seems to pay homage to Judas Priest's The Ripper.

In the end, Sabaton is doing what the do best, and it sounds great. I'm sure detractors will spurn Sabaton's war themes and dismiss their very European power metal. But this is what Sabaton is, and they do it very well. Musically, I found the best tracks to be Uprising, The Final Solution, Coat of Arms, and Metal Ripper.

Coat of Arms is pure Sabaton: bombastic and melodic power metal about the battles of war. Nobody does it better. Recommended.

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