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Power Metal: Sabaton - Legends (2025)

49 / 100
Legends is the album that feels monotonous and more like ceremonial background music than something emotionally or musically engaging.

is might sound like I’m forcing an opinion, since I haven’t followed Sabaton from the beginning and have only tried around two albums: Primo Victoria and Attero Dominatus, if I remember correctly, though even that’s hazy. Out of sheer curiosity, I jumped straight into Legends, partly because so many people were already showing off their AOTY lists. Meanwhile me? Wandering around, crossing space and time. Can’t deny I felt a bit envious.

Sabaton is undeniably one of the most successful bands when it comes to delivering historical themes, and it makes sense that they chose power metal from the start. Still, I feel that over time they’ve leaned more and more toward sounding like background music for an epic narration—and honestly, that gets boring for me. Why does it feel that way? Especially since I only know a handful of Sabaton songs to begin with.

Maybe it really just comes down to taste. Being served mid-tempo anthems across most of the eleven tracks makes this album feel like attending a Monday morning ceremony over and over again. Sure, “Templars,” placed up front, at least tries to dress itself up with choir layers—which, oddly enough, reminded me of ABBA’s “Lay All Your Love on Me.” Even after a full listen, I kept thinking that Sabaton might actually work better if they shifted genres, maybe toward pop or even post-punk, especially considering the less punchy drum sound and Joakim Brodén’s very dominant in baritone vocals here. Haha. Then there’s “Lightning at the Gates,” which feels like a straight clone of “The Lost Battalion,” with a chorus that, in my head, adds a slowed-down hint of Alestorm’s “Keelhauled.”

As the third Sabaton release I’ve tried, Legends only offers two tracks that feel genuinely energetic: “Hordes of Khan” and “Maid of Steel.” Of those two, “Maid of Steel” is the only one that immediately grabbed my attention on first listen; the other took a while to sink in.

So, in the end, Legends was lucky enough to be played at 1 a.m., which helped me sit through the entire album thanks to a vague gothic/post-punk vibe I somehow felt—sorry if that’s an exaggeration—instead of truly engaging with epic historical storytelling. Unfortunately, the lyrics themselves didn’t land effectively for me in my current state. As a result, this isn’t a Sabaton album I find particularly compelling.

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