Warfare.

I routinely get into arguments with fellow metalheads over a specific band called “Sabaton”. Here’s a typical song from them. I just picked one at random because I really don’t know their full discography; I just hate their general vibe: the glory of war.

Almost every song by Sabaton is a perky up-beat pop metal sound that’s pretty competently executed, but invariably it’s about “history” (by which is meant, naturally, warfare because apparently it’s not history if you’re not destroying things and killing people). The song I linked to, for example, has a history page on their web site.

Album after album, song after song, Sabaton produces a perky pop metal piece about some aspect of warfare. (When they’re not doing a slightly less perky pop metal song about the Holocaust, I mean.) And while their fan base claims they don’t glorify warfare, I call bullshit. They’re always there to praise the bravery and gloss over the horror. Their sound is relentlessly upbeat and they’re always there with the praise. There’s no other word for this than “glorifying”.

Now is this me saying you shouldn’t do songs about warfare? No! Of course not! There is really no topic that isn’t suited to art. But at least try to represent the truth of the topic? 'Cause, thing is, we have examples even in the metal community of doing it right. Consider Iron Maiden’s Paschendale. The song opens like a funeral dirge. When the hard and heavy starts it’s in a minor chord, full of discordant power chords that jar the nerves. The lyrics begin with an individual before spreading to the horror around him. It’s unsettling. It’s raw. The guitar solo is like the scream of an overloaded banshee trying to announce tens of thousands of dead at once. The music alone threatens to yank the tears from your eyes before you even catch the lyrics. It states the facts of the battle like every Sabaton song, adding some philosophical musing about humanity in the process, and it does so with music that’s appropriate to the horror. The pain. The futility.

That is warfare done right in art. Further, brutal as this is, it’s the “lite” version of doing warfare right in music.

Because then there’s also this song from Black Kirin about the Nanjing Massacre.

This is going to sound like clickbait, but it is not intended as such. Do not follow that link if you are in any kind of a vulnerable place.

The music will shred your heart. The screaming vocals are the tormented souls of the dead screaming at the futility of humanity. This is warfare done right in art, but with all the dials turned to 11. The band holds nothing back and the raw anguish and dread and rage is laid bare, even though you’re very likely not going to understand the words at all (being in Chinese and all that). Then on top of it you have … that disturbing video. All very tasteful, but filled to the brim with a nightmare-like reality that will haunt your own nightmares.

Iron Maiden and Black Kirin did warfare right in art. It’s unvarnished truth. It’s horror. Death. Tragedy. It’s everything that war is in real life. Not fodder for upbeat pop metal riffs.

Stop glorifying warfare.