Customer Reviews

Primo Victoria

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

REVIEW #1: SABATON - Primo Victoria

01. Primo Victoria
02. Reign of Terror
03. Panzer Battalion
04. Wolfpack
05. Counterstrike
06. Stalingrad
07. Into the Fire
08. Purple Heart
09. Metal Machine

Time 41:10


All you fans of bands such as Grave Digger, UDO, Running Wild, Manowar and the like should immediately grab your war helmuts and report for duty. Your new heavy metal idols have arrived!!!

Primo Victoria is apparently Sabaton's second release but the first real serious effort enlisting a big time production. This release is a concept album about world war 2. Thankfully a great backdrop for this type of music. What we have here is very polished on the one hand with humungous and extremely great sounding chorus lines but with a lead singer that is coming from the Grave Digger, UDO harsh vocal mold but not quite into the death metal realm. This is honest heavy metal played in your face and with all the freshness you do not get from the typical hords of Hammerfall/Helloween clones.

The album start off with a the stunning title track and rarely misses a beat the whole way through. Panzer Batallion, Wolfpack, Into The Fire, Metal Machine. They all smoke in a huge, heavy metal way. The album playing time is a bit short at only 40 minutes but there is no interludes or wasted space and the production is jam packed and well done.

If I have to be honest, this is an album that simply put cannot me missed by any true metal fan. Anyone claiming to be a fan of Classic Heavy Metal, True Metal or Power Metal that does not own a copy of this release, simply put, is a looser. It may not be the best album in your collection but it is one you will wield with a tremendous sense of pride.


9 of 10 Skulls
Buy Or Die!

Recently, I found this free mp3 site (which shall remain nameless) that seems to cater to up-and-coming bands or solo musicians, or old bands that may have drifted off into oblivion in all genres. Anyway, I ran across a listing for Sabaton in their Heavy Metal section. They had four songs for download. Two of which are from this album: Primo Victoria and Panzer Battalion. The other two supposedly from their first album that has apparently never been released.

So I downloaded all of them and played "Primo Victoria" first. WOW! What a catchy tune. First as a previous reviewer said, the chorus is very moving and gets you going for the rest of the song..."Through the Gates of Hell/As We Make Our Way to Heaven/Through the Nazi Lines/Primo Victoria!"

One thing that I feel is important on whether or not I like a band is the quality of their vocalist. If the band doesn't have a good vocalist, then no matter how the instrumentals are, the vocalist can kill a band. Sabaton has a great singer. He has a gravely voice, yet it's clean. Not quite death metal growlings, but close.

One thing I find interesting about this band is from what another reviewer said that the ages of the members are in their early 20s. On that mp3 site, they have a pic of the band and they look much older than that. I'm 31 and these guys appear to be at least in their late 20s. But anyway, that's neither here nor there.

So, if you live good heavy metal, and don't mind or even prefer what's known as Scandinavian metal, then you might want to pick up this album from Sabaton.

An absolutely fabulous album by Swedish band Sabaton. This album does not really have any weak points as the guitars are brilliant, the drumming extremely heavy and tight, and the vocals sound excellent. If you should compare Primo Victoria to anything I would say maybe a little like Jag Panzer at their best with a little Manowar (Kings of Metal era) thrown in. A must buy for all metal fans.

"Primo Victoria" (2005) is the second release from Swedish power metal band Sabaton.

Sabaton's lyrics predominantly have to do with twentieth and twenty-first century warfare and historical battles. This easily makes them one of the most educational bands in any genre.

Singer Joakim Brodén's vocals are lower and harsher than what you typically get with power metal. The songwriting, the melodies and the musicianship are all quite good here.

The album is only nine tracks long, and clocks in just over forty minutes. The last track, "Metal Machine", is a homage to every old metal song the band could think of and write into the lyrics. And it's cheesy beyond the limits of human decency, although it's catchy enough.

The sum total is that Sabaton is a pretty unique band in a genre often wallowing in derivative mediocrity.

This C.D. is simply BRILLIANT.Don't take my word for it,just look at the other rave reviews!I can't wait for their next one.I discovered them in the music section of www.download.com.You can sample/download mp3 a few tracks there.

I was always a metal head. And I was always the military type. So this is definetly the perfect band for me. I haven't heard anything like this before. Hammerfall is the closest for me, but they sing about chivalrous knights like the Templars. But Sabaton has some really good music going on. Every time I listen, I get this urge to turn it up higher until the the whole neighborhood is shaking. Thus far, I haven't heard any negative feedback. Its worth the price.

Originally released in 2005, Primo Victoria was the second full-length release (or first depending on how you place Metalizer) from Swedish power metal brigade Sabaton, who pair their hard charging melodic heavy metal sound with an obsession with warfare. Running Wild and Powerwolf are the closest points of comparison to Sabaton's sound. Just substitute the songs about pirates (Running Wild) and the devil (Powerwolf) with songs about tanks and old battles.

Primo Victoria is just an incredibly enjoyable power metal album. Songs about wars and the machinery of battle are nothing new (see: Bolt Thrower), but Sabaton took the subject matter and a stark martial approach and combined it perfectly with the classic European power metal sound. You don't know whether to bang your head or march in line half the time! The album is catchy, heavy and has some of Sabaton's best songs, including the monster title track, "Panzer Battalion" and "Metal Machine," which is a staple of their high-energy live shows.

Primo Victoria was a major milestone for Sabaton, and is the album that still really defines the band's unique sound. It's a strong, hard-hitting, melodic power metal album that should definitely appeal to fans of bands like Running Wild, Powerwolf, Grave Digger, Rage, Hammerfall, Jag Panzer, and perhaps even the militaristic Bolt Thrower.

Edition Notes: Nuclear Blast reissued a "Re-Armed" edition of Primo Victoria in 2010. The new version features expanded liner notes (with some very candid photos) and six bonus tracks, including the opening and closing themes they use in their live shows ("The March to War" and "Dead Soldiers Waltz"), a pair of live songs ("Into the Fire" and "Rise of Evil"), the previously unreleased "Shotgun" and a cover of Twisted Sister's "The Beast." The idea behind the reissue was to get the early Sabaton albums, which didn't have the best distribution initially, in the hands of the new fans who discovered the band after they signed to Nuclear Blast. This approach makes perfect sense, and they really have included enough extras here to make it worth replacing the earlier version if you bought it the first time around.

A wonderful CD by an amazing band. I first heard of Sabaton form a friend whio downloaded some off of a free download website, and I thought they were amazing. I finally got around to checking them out more, and WOW. There is no better band for WWII esque music than Sabaton. Give it a listen if you love good metal about war that doesn't have the whole growling vocals.

I only downloaded Primo Victoria as it is the best song on the cd so I cannot speak for the quality of the entire CD, but the sound quality for Primo Victoria was terrible. Best to get it from another location.

Wow....Another great offering from the Swedes...clearly the nation producing the best Heavy Metal at the moment. Excellent vocals (Joakim Broden can actually sing btw....not gravel-cookie monster vocals), catchy riffs, solos, powerful drums and a history lesson to boot. Great Album. Can't wait for the new CD Coat of Arms (May 2010).