Band:	Sabaton
Album:	The Last Stand
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	August 19, 2016
Guest review by:	tominator

01. Sparta
02. Last Dying Breath
03. Blood Of Bannockburn
04. Diary Of An Unknown Soldier
05. The Lost Battalion
06. Rorke's Drift
07. The Last Stand
08. Hill 3234
09. Shiroyama
10. Winged Hussars
11. The Last Battle
12. Camouflage [Stan Ridgway cover][bonus]
13. All Guns Blazing [Judas Priest cover][bonus]

Sabaton. Yeah, that name has become really well-known in the world of power metal. With albums like The Art Of War and Carolus Rex, it's not hard to understand why.

But what about the latest album? Is The Last Stand really a masterpiece like the official lyric videos tell us?

No, I wouldn't say so personally. This is Sabaton as you already know them. I don't find anything really innovative on this album. Is it bad? No, it's just that I expected more from the album (especially when they are claiming it would be a masterpiece). To me it feels a bit generic.

That said, if you are a huge fan of Sabaton, then this album is not going to disappoint you. There are three songs that stand out in my opinion. The title track is one of them; "The Lost Battalion" and "Winged Hussars" are the others. It's just that, apart from "The Lost Battalion," I always feel like I've heard these songs before on other albums. The thing I like so much about the Carolus Rex album is that it's a well thought-out concept for an album. Heroes had less synthesiser on it, which made it, in my opinion, feel unique among the other albums.

This one, though - it feels a lot like The Art Of War but blander. It feels like one of those sequels to a succesful movie. Is it bad? No, but it's not as good as the previous one. But as people who watch a lot of movies will confirm, the more sequels a movie gets, the more the formula becomes stale. That's exactly what I'm afraid of with the next Sabaton albums.

Overall the production is very solid. The riffs are a bit weak from time to time, something which Heroes did better, in my opinion (but in the case of that album, there weren't really a lot of synthesiser moments on it, which had to be mixed in as well). But, like I said, overall it sounds good. It sounds as grand as you've come to expect from Sabaton. Joakim sounds as powerful as ever. Excellent work. The lyrics are as solid as on the other albums, and the guitars and drums sound good as well. I just wish they came through a bit more.

In the end I can say that this album is made with very solid ideas but it feels formulaic by now. In short, would I recommend this album to other people? Yes, if you are a Sabaton fan; otherwise I probably wouldn't. I would probably recommend some of their other albums like The Art Of War, Carolus Rex, Primo Victoria, or Heroes. The Last Stand misses the really memorable songs, like, for instance "The Art Of War", "Cliffs Of Gallipoli", "Ghost Division", "Primo Victoria", "Wolfpack", "Carolus Rex", or "Resist And Bite", etc.

I expected more from it and it's definitely not the masterpiece they were claiming it to be. It's not bad, it's just solid.