This interview was conducted by Philip A. Wickstrand with keyboardist Daniel Mÿhr at Peter's Room at the Roseland Theater in Portland, OR on April 27, 2011.

SABATON have been on a roll as of late. After releasing their Nuclear Blast debut and fifth album overall, Coat of Arms, last year, Nuclear Blast has reissued their entire back catalogue with new liner notes and a whole slew of bonus tracks. From there, they have been selected as touring support for ACCEPT in North America and if the audience reaction at the Portland show is any indication, we'll be hearing a lot more from this Swedish Power Metal group in the near future.

Phil: First of all, how's the tour been so far?

Daniel: It's been really great, actually. We had no expectations whatsoever when we came over here. Nothing. We'd never really toured America before - we only did fly in, fly out gigs, back and forth, so this is our first and it's really nice. We can sometimes hope for some showers; it's not every venue that has that, but otherwise we're really happy. We have a good response from the audience and everything.

Phil: So you think that ACCEPT's fanbase, generally skewing older, has been accepting of you?

Daniel: Yeah, yeah - I think they kinda accept us because we have a lot of influences from ACCEPT actually, so they can hear a little bit of ACCEPT in our music.

Phil: That's good. I was kind of worried about that because I know a lot of older Metalheads tend to be pretty set in their ways and really aren't that open to most things.

Daniel: Yeah, but when they get to hear us and ACCEPT together, they kind of notice the similarities, they feel familiar with the music - it's not totally new. We're the same riff based kind of bands.

Phil: What would you say have been the best shows so far?

Daniel: Either New York or the Canadian shows. The Canadian shows were way over our expectations; we didn't know anything about Canada. We knew that we had like one fan there. [laughter] So the turnout from the Canadian gigs were really great.

Phil: You recently had the entire back catalogue reissued on Nuclear Blast; tell us a bit about why you chose the particular bonus tracks you did for those albums.

Daniel: Well, the main reason that we reissued with the bonus tracks and everything was that the old catalogue from the Black Lodge went out of print totally and when we got the new one, we more or less requested if we could do some extra bonus material for it, so we wrote some extra material for those reissues because there's got to be something new, we wanted to give something new with the new record label.

Phil: Tell us a bit about the song Shotgun - I noticed that it was markedly different from the rest of the material.

Daniel: Yeah. Well, now I don't really remember the song Shotgun [laughs] 'cause I hadn't written it and I wasn't a part of the whole writing thing, but it was a little bit more heavy, more thrashy. And have no idea what Joakim was thinking about when was doing that song, but I actually do like it. It's a good song. Quite different. So I guess that was his point, to kinda do something different than just the riff based, synthesized sound.

Phil: How serious do you think Nuclear Blast is about pushing you guys? Obviously, they're pretty committed if they're reissuing your entire back catalogue and outing you on tour with ACCEPT.

Daniel: Yeah. For example, it was them who asked us if we wanted to join them. They were hunting us down for almost two years before we could actually sign to them because we were still on contract with Black Lodge. And every time we ran into them, they were like "Okay, when are you going to sign with us? We want to work with you." We have noticed that they are very determined to get this band going somewhere because we've got good deals with everything. We were one of the first bands in ages that actually got a video budget from Nuclear Blast. So in that way we can actually see that they are really willing to push us forward.

Phil: How often do you plan on touring at this stage of your career? Heavily or moderate?

Daniel: We are always planning on touring quite heavily. I mean, during this last four months… well, let's see… we're in April now, last six months, we've done over almost a hundred gigs or something. We finished up last year with doing sixty-two gigs in three months. So we're touring very heavily and our aim is to keep on going until we get where we want to go.

Phil: There was just announced a tour in Europe with GRAVE DIGGER - what are your expectations for that?

Daniel: Ah, that one is just going to be great! I mean, we were touring as opening band for GRAVE DIGGER back in 2007, now we feel like we have our receipt and that they are coming with us, they want to come with us as an opening act, so I'm really looking forward to that tour and I know we will play at places where we are quite strong and we know also that GRAVE DIGGER can pull a good crowd. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to that.

Phil: Recommend a book for our readers and then explain why you recommend that particular work.

Daniel: Oh! Can it be any kind of book?

Phil: Any kind of book.

Daniel: Oh my… it's been quite a long time since I've read a book. But me personally, I'm kind of a sucker for Terry Prachett, so I guess I could recommend any Terry Prachett book. It's fantasy but with some present-time issues baked into the whole thing with lots of humor. I really love those books.

Phil: I just picked up a couple of his books; I haven't gotten to them yet 'cause I've got a stack of two hundred and fifty or so that I haven't read yet, they're definitely ones I'm looking forward to getting to.

Daniel: Yeah, I can really recommend those because he's the only writer I have read multiple books of. I've read like, a little bit more than half of his books, I think. He was like over twenty out. I think I've read like fifteen or sixteen of them.

Phil: I think his Discworld series is at something like twenty-five books now. Somewhere around there.

Daniel: So I'm still missing a couple of those.

Phil: All right, are you preparing for your next album or are you just kind of going off the momentum from the reissues and Coat of Arms right now?

Daniel: We are, in this very moment, writing new stuff. It's so much now when we're on tour because there's no time to do any composing or thinking about that and you're in general quite tired of music when you're on tour. But yeah, we have finished some material for the next upcoming album already. We have pre-productions of it and start like thinking arrangements.

Phil: Can you tell us anything about what lyrical topics are or what direction it's going musically?

Daniel: What direction it's going musically, I cannot really say. It's going to be SABATON for sure, but it's also going to be some new elements. But I think the change won't be so noticeable. The change will more or less be like going from the difference between The Art of War and Coat of Arms. We started adding and stacking up a little bit more. Topic-wise it will be about history in general but with a little bit of a different twist this time, but I'm not going tell too much about that.

Sabaton's Daniel Mÿhr

Interviewer: Philip A. Wickstrand

May 7, 2011

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TO THE TOP

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Formed: 1999
Dalarna, Falun  Sweden
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Genre: Power Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

Joakim Broden:  Vocals
Rikard Sunden:  Guitar
Oskar Montelius:  Guitar
Daniel Mÿhr:  Keyboards
Pär Sundström:  Bass
Daniel Mullback:  Drums

DISCOGRAPHY:

Fist for Fight: Best of/Comp. (2000)
Primo Victoria (2005)
Attero Dominatus (2006)
Metalizer (2007)
The Art of War (2008)
Coat of Arms (2010)

PHOTOS BY PHIL A. WICKSTRAND

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)