Sabaton vocalist Joakim Brodén shared his thoughts and feelings about being the band’s singer and keyboardist at the same time during his recent appearance on Chaoszine’s My Story As Metal Frontman.
Brodén started his career as a keyboardist when he joined Stormwind as their touring member. Then, he and bassist Pär Sundström formed Sabaton in 1999, and Brodén became both singer and keyboardist for the band. The singer continued his duties in the band as a keyboardist until 2005.
At that time, Sabaton found a new keyboard player, Daniel Mÿhr, to help Brodén focus on songwriting and singing more. Brodén admitted that he was angry with the bandmates for taking his job from him. However, he realized that he was always a frontman before he decided to become one. Brodén thought he had to do his best for himself, the band, and the audience.
In 2012 when the band’s lineup changed, Brodén started to play the keyboard along with performing the songs. The Sabaton frontman revealed that he didn’t perform with for such a long time that it’s hard to get used to it. He defined it as a ‘weird transition’ that he doesn’t know what to think about.
Brodén said in his interview that:
“Well, they still haven’t found a singer! I’m comfortable with it now, but I was seriously a bit angry in 2005 when they came and said they found my keyboard player, and I was like, ‘F*ck you guys, that’s my job.’
So, no, that’s something that sort of slipped onto me so that I became a singer before I even realized I was a singer. I think I was a frontman even before I was a frontman in my mind.”
He added:
“Of course, even though I wasn’t where I felt I was supposed to be, I always felt like I owed myself, the band and the people, the few who were in the crowd, to do the best I could and improve as much as I could.
However, in my mind, I was only the keyboard player until we came back; at some point in our career, we came back after the tour, and I was going to play keyboards, and I realized I hadn’t played keyboards in such a long time that my fingers weren’t doing what my mind wanted them to do. So, yeah, weird transition for me. I still don’t know what to think of it.“
You can check out the interview below.
