Night Witches is the first song on the Heroes album by Sabaton.
Information[]
- Smoking Snakes was considered to be the album's opening song, until Joakim wrote Night Witches.[1]
- Joakim wanted the album to start with a distorted radio sound "going into a big boom", hence why the song starts the way it does.[2]
- The story was one of the first topics that the band had for the Heroes album.[3]
- Joakim admitted that when he was doing a PR for the Heroes album, during one of the interviews he got a little bit carried away while talking about the "Night Witches", he talked about it for 8 minutes because he was so excited about it, and the unexperienced interviewer's reaction was "what about the next song?".[4]
- Official animated video for the song premiered on the 8th October 2020.
- Along with the video, the band released the song-themed merchandise collection.
- There's all female Sabaton fanclub that has taken its name from the song - Sabaton Witches Division.
Background[]
Joakim: "When I had the song Night Witches, the first one, I knew this was probably the album opener. (MK: “Right when you wrote it?”) Yep. I already had the song Smoking Snakes which I thought was going to be the album opener until I had Night Witches, then I knew that was the one."[5]
"(...) Night Witches has some kind of industrial sound. Is it due to Peter Tägtgren’s work with Pain?
Joakim: No, it was actually me knowing we were gonna work with Peter (laugh)! You know, I had the intro and this idea that we were gonna start the album with a distorted radio and then going into a big boom! Peter did have an influence on our music as far as the production is concerned because he has this sound you know?"[6]
Joakim: "(...) When we started research for Heroes, this was one of the first that came up for us. That's been in our what do you call it, "Secret Sabaton Archive" and we thought it was a perfect way to open the album as well. We have a tradition of doing something surprising for the first song, and I think that massive opening was a perfect way to start off the album. (...) And we did something different there also with the chorus being half beat compared to the rest of the song and which is something I really hate. (...) It's the only time I actually thought it worked. (...). The story itself is fantastic, no matter if it would have been men or women, the fact that it is women it's (...) extra nice bonus I think."[7]
Historic fact[]
The story of the Russian female pilots of the 588th bomber regiment. Their nickname “Night Witches” comes from the characteristic sound of their bomb planes that was all that could be heard during their nightly raids since they set their engines to idle and would glide through the night to their target. This sound brought the enemies thoughts to the broomsticks of witches, and they called them “Nachthexen”.[8]
Live[]
- The live version features extendend intro and outro, absent from the studio version of the song.
- Played on almost every concert since it's premiere.
Joakim: (...) It's still (...) a part of our live set, very popular with the fans and us as well, I think we have some of the coolest (...) pyro and video stuff going on, so I actually really enjoy playing that because I get off, we all guess go off stage as the live intro for that song starts and I sing the intro off stage and I just keep get running in on the first "boom" of the verse.[9]
Lyrics[]
From the depths of hell in silence |
Official video[]
Pär Sundström comments:
“I first came into contact with Yarn Hub when a fan recommended a video that was connected to one of our songs and I was impressed by the emotions Yarn Hub delivers in their videos. When Yarn Hub asked if they could feature our singer Joakim in a small cameo I said yes instantly and thought it added such a nice touch to the episode about T.E Lawrence. After that we started to discuss if we could do something together and the idea of ‘Night Witches’ was born. It was impossible not to become emotional when I saw the animated short film for the first time. This is a different way of telling these stories, but what a fantastic way! Enjoy it friends, this is something special.”
Yarn Hub comments: “Working with SABATON started when we got permission to do a cameo of Joakim at the grave of Lawrence of Arabia. We’re all long time SABATON fans as they really capture with passion the epic moments of history. Seeing there was no official video for ‘Night Witches’, we reached out with an idea to the SABATON management team and graciously were given permission to do a collaboration.
To be entrusted to do this was a huge honor. In this story we try and capture the hardship that these young women had to overcome and their journey through sacrifice and bravery to become respected by all…. even their enemies. Working with SABATON’s original music was really daunting. For a 7 minute video, playing the original music on loop wasn’t going to effectively narrate the entire story, so we wrote some additional music to “extend” the ‘Night Witches’. Often for us it’s difficult to do a long battle scene with narration, so in this video to use the unadulterated SABATON music for the battle was an absolute gift.“
About Yarn Hub: Yarn Hub is a small group of artists, animators and musicians that want to make history videos that make you feel a connection to the people in the story. They strive to animate them in a way that honors the epicness of history, rather than just listing facts. That means original artwork, animation and writing and performing original music in their videos. They have transformed their style since starting out in just 2019 moving from 2D into what is 3D but with a 2D feel. They are not looking to do photo realism but they are trying to tell stories that convey meaning and emotion as much as they can within the limits of their style.[10]
Lyric video[]
Sabaton History[]
