Sabaton - The Last Stand (10th Anniversary) [2LP Marble]

Sabaton's The Last Stand turns ten with an anniversary edition on marbled colored vinyl, a gatefold 2LP of the Swedish band's 2016 salute to history's most desperate final battles.

The Falun band, led by singer Joakim Brodén, had long since made military history their entire reason for being, but this eighth studio album gave the concept a sharp focus. Nearly every song tells the story of soldiers who held their ground against overwhelming odds, from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century Japan to the mountains of Afghanistan, and the band treats each tale with a mix of reverence and arena-sized bombast.

Sparta kicks things off with pounding drums and chanted vocals built for festival crowds, while Shiroyama tells of the last samurai stand in 1877 over a soaring, melodic chorus. Winged Hussars charges in with the cavalry that broke the siege of Vienna, all galloping riffs and fist-raising choruses, and The Lost Battalion recounts a besieged American unit in the First World War with grim, thundering power.

The production is huge and polished, with choirs, keyboards and twin guitars stacked into a wall of sound that never forgets the hooks.

Ten years on, this anniversary pressing is a handsome way to march back through a record the faithful already know word for word.