Pär Sundström has a blunt view on one piece of received wisdom in heavy metal: the idea that a band has to keep reinventing itself to stay on top. As far as the Sabaton bassist and manager is concerned, it simply is not true.
Speaking to Sakis Fragos of “Rock Hard Greece“, Sundström dug into what has turned the Swedish outfit into one of Europe’s most commercially successful metal bands — and why chasing novelty was never part of the plan.
Speaking about the band’s rise, Sundström put it down to a stack of factors rather than one magic ingredient, and to a stubborn streak that treats doubt as fuel. He said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth):
“I think that the success of Sabaton lies in a combination of a lot of things. We’ve always been a hardworking band, and we’ve always been a do-it-yourself band, a band that is driven by people saying ‘it cannot be done’. We’re driven by people saying that ‘you can’t do that, you can’t do that.’ Me and [Sabaton singer] Joakim [Brodén] always [were], like, ‘Yeah, then let’s do it and prove those people wrong.’ We’re both happy to have met each other. I mean, he’s a great songwriter, fantastic singer, and this. And I could do the other part, which was more natural for me. And together, it became very good as a team there, ’cause we complete each other very well. And I think that the success of Sabaton cannot be attributed to a single thing. It’s attributed to a lot of things. And since 2012, the lineup is sort of complete with Thobbe [Englund, guitar], Chris [Rörland, guitar] and Hannes [Van Dahl, drums]. And they have all given their heart and soul to this band, and we are such a unit, and we are here. And I think that the success of Sabaton is attributed to a lot of this. And to the great team that is sitting, working in our office. So, all the people around us. It’s not just any single thing that can take the glory for that. It’s all of us. But I would say that the main cause is that we believed always in doing things our way.”
Sundström was especially proud of how much the band handles in-house, without managers or consultants telling them how things are supposed to be done:
“Yeah, we never had a management to tell us anything how to do or how to do things and this and that and that. We always invented the wheel over and over again — how we tour, how we do that, how we do that. I mean, last year we were doing, I would say, the biggest tour in Europe or something, with over 200 crew members. It was all put together by me and my best friend from childhood who is our production manager for the last 20-something years. And nobody ever told us how you pull together a 200-crewmember touring party that goes around like a small town building up these things. We were doing everything without any external professional people coming and tell us how you do it. We did it our way, and this is part of how we always [were]. Even though we make mistakes, we’re okay with that. We are totally fine with making mistakes. We learn from them and we move on. We don’t let the negative things weigh us down so much. They do happen to everybody, and then we just move on with it.”
The most pointed answer came when Sundström was asked how hard it is to keep Sabaton fresh after more than 25 years. His response was that freshness is not the goal — and that plenty of metal bands have proved you don’t need it:
“Yeah, I think it is not important to be fresh. A lot of bands before us have proven that to be a functional thing in the heavy metal industry. So, being fresh is not necessary to be successful in heavy metal. We know that. So for us it was never about that. We just do what we do, and sometimes we have a lot of ideas that maybe can be considered very fresh or unique thinking. Like we started our own festival — now it’s on pause, but we still ran it for 13 years. Our own cruise was for 14 years. We were not the first one to run our own magazine, but we did it our way and we started it up and it’s this free magazine that we are running now for several years. And we are operating our mailorder in a way that I wouldn’t say I see in other bands how we do that. Because we don’t really look at what others are doing. We just think what we wanna do and then we do it. I mean, Sabaton history channel, it was something we wanted to do. I don’t think anybody else has produced over 130 documentary movies about history like that, how we are working together with museums all around the world, these kind of things. [It is] just a lot of stuff that we just do.”
Sabaton are deep into “The Legendary Tour“, the campaign supporting their 11th album, Legends, released October 17, 2025 through Better Noise Music. The concept record turns its attention to some of history’s most famous figures, among them Napoleon, Julius Caesar and swordsman Miyamoto Musashi.
The European arena leg opened November 14, 2025 at Lanxess Arena in Cologne and pulled in more than 260,000 people across 13 countries, hauling 420 tons of equipment, including a full stage castle with a mechanical drawbridge, in what the band bills as the biggest arena production a rock band has ever mounted.
In June, Sabaton confirmed a second European leg for April and May 2027, taking in 15 countries with stops at Dublin’s 3Arena, Glasgow’s OVO Hydro and Birmingham’s NEC. The Legendary Orchestra returns for that run alongside guest performers Noa Gruman, Tina Guo and Mia Asano.
Earlier this year, Sabaton postponed their North American tour so Sundström could recover from inflammation in his arms. The original run was set to open February 9 in Fort Lauderdale and finish April 20 in Vancouver, with stops in Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston along the way.
The rescheduled leg now opens September 23 in Halifax, Nova Scotia and wraps December 12 in Fort Lauderdale.
Earlier in June, Sabaton also officially announced an extensive arena tour across their home country. Scheduled for January and February of 2027, the trek is being billed as “Den Stora Sverigeturnén III” (“The Grand Swedish Arena Tour“.
Photo credit: Zorana Vujčič
