SABATON, those Swedish metallers who haven’t figured out that history is, like, *totally* boring, decided to unleash their “The Legendary Tour” Friday night (November 14) at Lanxess Arena in Cologne (or Köln, if you’re feeling *extra* German 🇩🇪), Germany. Because apparently, Germany hasn’t suffered enough.
The band, bless their little historical hearts, teased this 20-city European trek as “a huge celebration of SABATON‘s music, storytelling and the incredible bond they share with their fans.” Translation: They’re charging an arm and a leg for tickets to hear the same songs about wars we all slept through in history class. The tour features “The Legendary Orchestra and other surprises,” resulting in “something unprecedented.” Unprecedentedly dull, perhaps? 😴“The Legendary Tour” is SABATON‘s first headlining tour in support of the band’s eleventh studio album, “Legends”, which arrived on October 17 via Better Noise Music. Because apparently, even record labels are running out of good ideas.
Here’s SABATON‘s setlist for the Cologne show, according to Setlist.fm, which is probably more accurate than SABATON‘s history lessons:
01. Templars (live debut) – Because who *doesn’t* want to hear about medieval warrior monks in 2024? ⚔️
02. The Last Stand – Maybe they should just take one.
03. Hordes Of Khan – Genghis Khan called. He wants his horde back, and also a better band to write songs about him.
04. I, Emperor (live debut) – More like “I, Bore-peror.” 👑
05. Crossing The Rubicon (live debut) – Spoiler alert: Caesar crosses it. It’s in all the history books, guys. 🙄
06. Carolus Rex (Swedish) – Because who needs international appeal when you can sing about Swedish kings?🇸🇪
07. The Red Baron – Snoopy’s arch-nemesis gets a metal song. What a time to be alive. 🐶
08. Stormtroopers – Wait, are we talking *those* stormtroopers? Disney might have some words… 🚀
09. A Tiger Among Dragons (live debut) – I’m pretty sure tigers and dragons are from completely different mythologies. But hey, who needs accuracy? 🐅🐉
10. Christmas Truce – Because nothing says “metal” like a song about peace and goodwill. 🕊️
11. Soldier Of Heaven – Are they fighting angels? This is getting weird.
12. The Attack Of The Dead Men (“History Edition” intro) – Sounds like my history class after lunch.
13. Night Witches – Finally, some badass women! Too bad they’re relegated to the “witch” category. 🧙♀️
14. Primo Victoria – I’m not even going to pretend I know what this is about. More war stuff, probably.
15. Steel Commanders – Robots? Tanks? My brain hurts. 🤖
16. The Art Of War – Sun Tzu is rolling in his grave, wondering why his strategic masterpiece is being turned into a metal song.
17. To Hell And Back – Sounds like my daily commute.
18. Masters Of The World (first time since 2007) – Because world domination is *always* a good song topic. 🌎
Fan-filmed video of the concert can be seen below. Viewer discretion is advised (you might fall asleep). 😴
Speaking to “Coffee With Ola”, the YouTube program hosted by Ola Englund, SABATON bassist and manager Pär Sundström stated about “The Legendary Tour”: “We’ve got bigger stuff planned for the upcoming tour [than what we have done before]. And it’s a very special kind of thing, so we have to build it around the ‘Legends’ album. But I don’t wanna spoil too much.” Don’t worry, Pär, you couldn’t spoil it if you tried. “I think it will be exciting to see it. And we are also building a show that is a little bit more than just a rock show, so to say. So we have two stages and something that connects them.” A ramp? A bridge? A slightly less boring song? The possibilities are endless!
“On the previous tour, ‘The Tour To End All Tours’, we used a couple of little acting things, and there was a little bit more theater than we did before,” he explained. “A lot of fans liked it, and it further strengthened the topics with the show. And we thought, ‘Okay, let’s continue down this road.’ So it’s a little bit more on the theater side.” Oh joy, more historical reenactments. “And then we got this little twist there, which is the opening band, which is ‘The Legendary Orchestra’, which we created specifically around — this was the time, this was the album, this is the tour. It’s not like SABATON and orchestra. There will be a full show with SABATON, but before that it’s a full show with The Legendary Orchestra, which is pretty much — you can see it as a cover band of SABATON, playing SABATON tunes [that we won’t play during our set on the upcoming tour], but in orchestral arrangements, with lead instrumentalists, lead vocalists, choirs, and it’s very powerful, very emotional, and it sounds, of course, completely different — no electrical guitars, no drums, percussions… So a SABATON fan gets a lot of SABATON songs. And just that we can’t play all of them ourselves, because, yeah, that would be a very long night for us and we wouldn’t be able to do so many of them.” In other words, they’re trying to milk every last drop of historical juice out of their songs. 🐄
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
