Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127412 in Music
• Released on: 2008-06-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

Album Description
The fourth album from these Swedish heavy metal powerlords arrives! 'The Art Of War' is based on the the ancient warfare manual of the same name, written by General Sun Tzu in 600 B.C.

Customer Reviews

Marching to war
It's almost worth getting this for the history lesson alone. Where else are you going to learn about a beer swilling bear that was used by the Polish in WWII? The music is the heavy sound of power metal and the singer has a man's voice, no high fallsettos here. I love their style and appreciate the history that comes with it. They are doing something different and worth checking out though the price is still a little high.

Great, melodic, power metal about wars and battles
This is STRAIGHT UP power metal music. The vocals are somewhat gruff, but clearly understandable and in NO WAY screaming or guttural. The theme of the album runs throughout and the vocal interludes are interesting and deal directly with th song.

THE BATTLE FOR YOUR BUCK
War-inspired SABATON are back again with another album of War Anthems.
Previous songs of theirs like "Primo Victoria" may seem unbeatable, but there are a few new ones here that come close.

SABATON's strategy to make you buy this album consists of several parts:

1) CONCEPT -- Sun Tzu's "Art of War" is the whole focus of this album and there is a female voice quoting some passages as an intro to some of the songs.

2) DIFFERENT SOUNDS -- I haven't heard the previous SABATON albums, but on this one, the song "The Art of War" sports a catchy techno-sounding beat. I could really see SCOOTER doing a remix of this one. To put you at ease, the techno-sound is merely a side-dish, so to speak. The rest of the song is your typical guitars and anthem-like, sing along chorus.

3) A FEW GOOD TRACKS -- There are 13 tracks on this CD. Three are strictly "Sun Tzu says . . ." tracks by that female narrator mentioned earlier. So of the 10 tracks remaining, I found "The Art of War", "Unbreakable", "The Price of a Mile" and "Ghost Division" to be really really good. A few came close, like "40:1", but the remaining tracks weren't as good as those 4.
For what it's worth, I think "Ghost Division" and "The Art of War" are my favorite SABATON tracks, next to their flagship "Primo Victoria" (really, how do you top a song about D-Day?).

Now that they have assaulted my ears with their music, do I feel that they won the battle? Is this an album worth getting?
Looking at the current price and seeing how I only liked half of the ten actual tracks, the answer is no. BUT you should definitely check out the tracks on an individual basis and acquire the ones you like as MP3 Downloads.

If you like SABATON and are looking for another band that uses war as a central theme, I recommend the heavier-sounding BOLT THROWER.