Review Summary: One of the safest albums of the year.
The War To End All Wars is the album to end all albums. Sabaton produce what I call fake power metal: mainstream, barely heavy tracks with heaps of adorable, sing-along choruses included to brush your teeth with. It’s nothing special, but at least there’s a handful of solid thumpers like the opening song and Hellfighters. In the heavier songs they actually sound like they give a ***, but aside from that they play pop with soft, baby blanket riffs. It’s music just “aggressive” enough to seem edgy for casual metal listeners. It’s squeaky clean, family friendly metal for delicate ears. Once again, Sabaton are zombified, going through motions, looking like they’re in it for the almighty dollar. There is a way to create compelling mainstream metal, and this is not it.
It’s clear that at all corners, Sabaton’s efforts look weak. Not just weak though, for the singing is atrocious. Production magic butters up vocals as much as possible, but outside of slickly auto-tuned choruses there’s nothing slick about the singing. When there’s less studio editing on the vocals, it’s glaringly obvious that he’s phoning in his performance. Compared to new power metal bands ripping it up, hitting impressive notes, his veteran performance is so lazy it’s downright cringey.
I won’t beat around the bush: this album is boring. I listened to it when I had nothing better to do, and I immediately discarded it afterwards and promptly forgot every song. The riffs are stale and crustless, and the drumming is not complicated. There’s a selection of catchy choruses, and a war theme, but that’s all there is. I expected Sabaton to finally impress me, but this album doesn’t even make a dent in the radar when compared to the top power metal albums of this year. Fans will undoubtedly eat this up, considering Sabaton are giving more of the same, but this is otherwise easily skippable.
