🎶 Sabaton
🌎 Falun, Sweden
📀 Legends
® Better Noise Music
📅 17/10/2025

The band that Greek metalheads love to hate, SABATON, has returned with a new album, completing a football team’s lineup of releases (11 in other words). So, if we had to place “Legends” somewhere on the field, I think that place would be in the center as a defensive midfielder. Just as a defensive midfielder ensures calm in defense and carries the ball to the attack, so “Legends,” without being a fancy addition to their discography, manages to connect the present with the past from the era of “Heroes” and “The Last Stand.” The main reason… the return of the exceptional guitarist Thobbe Englund.

Really, anyone expecting something groundbreaking and innovative from SABATON will be waiting a long time. Better to listen to CORONER. SABATON fans reverently follow their favorite band because it offers them a sure solution, a sheltered harbor in the storm of new releases and experimental albums. After finishing with World War I, they decided to dust off the books of world history and unearth legendary figures such as Joan of Arc, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and Vlad the Impaler. So, here’s another chance for a history lesson, even if it’s just a superficial one, from Professor Broden.

Overall, I can say that I enjoyed “Legends.” It includes some classic SABATON songs such as the epic “Templars” (dedicated to the Templar Knights), which opens with choral vocals or the very powerful duo of “… Crossing the Rubicon” and “I, Emperor” for Julius Caesar and Napoleon, respectively. My personal favorite is the innovative, for SABATON standards, “The Cycle of Songs” (inspired by Pharaoh Sanusret III), in which, especially in the intro, they stray a little from their usual style and are reminiscent of the ’80s and ’90s. Of course, there are also the so-called fillers, such as “Lightning at the Gates” about General Hannibal or “A Tiger Among Dragons” about the famous warrior Lu Bu, which is overly reminiscent of a dozen or so other songs from their entire discography. The clear improvement over their latest efforts comes with Englund, who offers some noteworthy riffs and guitar solos.

Besides all the above… amazing production as usual, a complete promotional package with video clips, plenty of merch (they have released 11 editions, each dedicated to a different legend) and, in general, the production machines running at full speed on all levels. The result? Another album with catchy tunes, ideal for the epic shows that SABATON know how to put on and another link in a chain of releases that shows no sign of breaking (for better or worse).

★ 7/10
✍🏻 Kostas Boudoukos