Before reviewing the new Powerwolf album, I should state that I completely missed the bandwagon when it comes to this band. ‘Blessed & Possessed’ is their sixth album already and I’m ashamed to say that the latest addition is the only one that I’ve listened to. But once I dived into the record I found out that Powerwolf’s music is extremely addictive and absolutely worth your while.
Three years ago there was a riot at the Sabaton headquarters. It resulted in the departure of four members who decided to start anew. Three of them are still active in Civil War, keyboard player Daniel Myhr is one of them. With a life full of adventure we were left with a lot of questions. Why is it just out while the record was finished last July? How is the relationship with the other Sabaton guys? And do they ever get tired talking about Sabaton this much? He gladly picked up the phone to have a little chat about the new record ‘Gods And Generals.
Let me start with saying the following: Civil War is a band conducted from old members of the Swedish metal band Sabaton. We all know that Sabaton is loved by many people and most of those fans will probably want to be introduced to Civil War. That is a grave misunderstanding! Yes, the music Civil War produces is very like Sabaton, but if you look at it that way it will not score well. ‘Gods And Generals’ is just the second album by Civil War, nothing more.
My favorite war-facts are the ones that you never ever knew about. The ones that you read about and think, “How many people still remember this?” One of those moments happened to me last week when brainstorming for a new Sabaton Saturday. So this week on Overall Loudness’ Sabaton Saturday: ‘The Six Day War’, or, in other words, the ‘Third Arab-Iraeli War’. Which is featured in Sabaton’s ‘Counterstrike’.
In, and after, the second world war the rights and places of women in the world, and especially in the United States, changed drastically. The men were gone off to fight in the overseas war and slowly the women were forced to be doing the tasks the men used to do, before they left.
But also in the war itself, women were very much involved. So this week on Overall Loudness’ Sabaton Saturday: The 588th Night Bomber Regiment, a.k.a. the ‘Night Witches’.
With the recent success of films like ‘300’ and ‘300: Rise Of An Empire’, you could almost feel that the Sabaton track ‘Coat Of Arms’ is about this same time period. But that is not true. On this week’s Sabaton Saturday the real background of ‘Coat Of Arms’: The Greco-Italian War.
We, the Dutch people, have never really experienced the horrors that the World War I brought along. With the excuse of being “neutral”, we were ignored by the German forces that cut straight through Belgium, without harming Holland.
Sabaton have written a song about the horrors of the First World War, ‘The Price Of A Mile’. It’s about all the young men being stuck in a trench, knee-deep in the muddy water. It was cold, it was filthy, everyone was afraid. People were dying out there. And if you didn’t die, you were going insane.
Let me begin by apologizing for the fact that I did not post a Sabaton Saturday last week. I had a tough week, finishing a lot of stuff for school and in the meantime working for a new boss. I know, a bad excuse, but it happened and therefore I apologize.
So now to the new Sabaton Saturday. Most wars are fought mostly on land. That are the wars that I always got taught about at school and that children hear about these days. But this story is one that took place on the Atlantic ocean. This is all about the ‘Wolfpack’, an alternative name for the groups of German submarines during the Second World War.
Two weeks ago I explained the conclusion of the pacific war and, at the same time, the end of World War II. The atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While most of WWII went down on the European mainlands, there was some heavy fighting in the so-called ‘Pacific Theater of Operations’.
First the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, a naval base near the Hawaii islands. This was a terrible and unpredictable attack from the United States’ point of view. Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor the Allied forces fought off another Japanese attack in the Pacific Theater. At the Midway Islands the battle of Midway was fought, 4-7 June, 1942.
