"Bands that Sing about Historical Wars/Action" Topic

Is Iron Maiden the leader in this department?

They've done The Trooper (Charge of the Light Brigade), Aces High (Battle of Britain) and many others. Their new album Book of Souls has one about the Red Baron and one about the R101 airship disaster.

Who else?

Al Stewart comes to mind.

Saboton.

link

Most definitely Al Stewart! "The Post World War Two Blues", "Old Admirals", "Warren Harding", "The Last Day of June 1934", "Road to Moscow", "The Dark and the Rolling Sea", "Lord Grenville", "On the Border", "A Man for All Seasons", "The Palace of Versailles", "Murmansk Run"and more.

Not much directly about battles, though.

Johnny Horton.

Latin Quarter "Eddie", about Soldiers returning from the Falkland War and their struggle with PTSD. Not really about Battles …

Lyrics: link

Story behind it: link

Does this count:
Snoopy Vs The Red Baron Lyrics
After the turn of the century
In the clear blue skies over Germany
Came a roar and a thunder man has never heard
Like the screaming sound of a big war bird.
Up in the sky, a man in a plane
Baron Von Richthofen was his name
Eight-y men tried and eight-y men died
Now they're buried together on the country side.

Chorus:
Ten, Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The bloody Red Baron was rollin' up the score
Eight-y men died trying to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany.

In the nick of time, a hero arose
A funny looking dog with a big black nose
He flew into the sky to seek revenge
But the Baron shot him down
"Curses, foiled again!"

(Chorus)

Now Snoopy had swore that he'd get that man
So he asked the Great Pumpkin for a new battle plan
He challenged the German to a real dog fight
While the Baron was laughing he got him in his sights.
That bloody Red Baron was in a fix
He tried everything but he'd run out of tricks
Snoopy fired once and he fired twice
And that Bloody Red Baron went spin-nin out of sight.

(Chorus x 2)

Manic Street Preachers "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" is about the Spanish Civil War….

link

Sabaton does a lot. Blind Guardian have a it. Manowar. 97th Regimental String Band does lots of ACW music. Iced Earth did the Gettysburg conceptual album.

New Maiden album is good.

Agreed, Al Stewart came to mind as well.
Bruce Cogburn, "If I had a rocket launcher"
"War" by War.

Neo Folk acts like Death in June etc, and Military Industrial like Der Blutarsch and Ghosts of Breslau etc have a heady militaristic/historical atmosphere. Lots of historical audio samples.

Randy Newman. Not so much wars, but a deep sense of history. Sail Away. Sigmund Freud's Impersonation of Albert Einstein in America. Louisiana 1927. In Germany Before The War.

Blyth Power probably have as good a selection as anyone "Breitenfeld" being my favourite. They also do a class one about the Cod War as well….

Zippy, don't forget Newman's "Song for the Dead." Very powerful.

Phil Ochs. Men Behind the Guns.

Strawhead?

strawhead.org.uk

Camel – Nude (I suspect it's pronounced "New day") is about a Japanese soldier left isolated after WW2 who was still fighting long afterwards. A whole album with a war (or anti-war) theme

"Forward they cried" from the rear, and the front ranks died,
And the generals sat, and the lines on the map moved from side to side,

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, 1974 ?

Can't think of anymore by them at the moment, though

Metallica

Eric Burdon's "Sky Pilot"

This was the term for a chaplain in the Vietnam War. If you've never heard it, download it ASAP. An amazing, poignant song.

I don't think Sabaton sing about anything else, do they?

Back in the '80s the band HuDu Gurus had some clever songs, one about being a kamikaze pilot.

Public Service Broadcasting mixes historical audio tracks into their songs. The song Spitfire comes to mind.

Mike

Motorhead have some military history themed songs. 1916.

I'm going to agree with Flashman14 on Iron Maiden's dominance. It seems to me that most of their songs about Historical Battles and Wars are fantastic. One of my personal favorites will always be Iron Maiden's 'Longest Day,' about the Normandy invasion. My second favorite would probably be 'Run to the Hills,' about the Indian Wars in America.

I am embarrassed that I remember this….

"Billy Don't Be A Hero" by Paper Lace.

YouTube link

Dagwood – the other major Pink Floyd war song would be "When the Tigers Broke Free" about Roger Waters' father's death at Anzio.

I'd second Strawhead (who were given the anagrammatical nickname Wardeaths). Fairport Convention did a song about their local battle, Cropredy Bridge, called "Red and Gold".

The video for fun's (that's the stylized name of the group) "Some Nights" has an ACW theme.

YouTube link

Final Cut album by Pink Floyd, it had a number of Falklands related songs, like "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert".

Papa jumped the gun back in '41,
Following the flag of the Rising Sun.
When Tojo did the Mojo,
He went down in flames.
US destroyers against kamikaze planes.

Bryan Adams' "Remembrance Day"

"Shipbuilding" by Elvis Costello about the Falklands War and the effect on the home front
"A Pair of Brown Eyes" by the Pogues about the Great War in Turkey
"Sunday, Bloody Sunday" by U2 about the Troubles in Ireland (among other themes)
"Living Through another Cuba" by XTC about the Cold War in the Reagan Years
"Holiday in Cambodia" by the Dead Kennedys about the Pol Pot regime and mass murder and tourism in other people's misery
"Sandinista" by the Clash about the Sandinista regime and Reagan's government trying to overthrow them.
"Straight to Hell" by the Clash about the half-American/half-Vietmanese kids stuck in limbo in Vietnam after the war (among other things)
"I'm so Bored with the USA" by the Clash about bored Yankee soldiers in Europe trying to get high on heroin during the Cold War (among other things)
" 99 LuftBalloons" by Nina about trying to end the Cold War
"In the Name of Love" by U2 about Allied soldiers attacking Nazi Europe in the name of freedom (among other themes)
"No Thugs in Our House" by XTC about a father ignoring his son's violent skinhead attacks while the dad studies the Prussian Wars.
"War" by U2 attacking war-mongering ideology in the Reagan Administration.
"Cynthia Mask" by Robyn Hitchcock about "Chamberlain came crawling from Munich with one piece of paper, " Peace in our time" Oh, thank you, Herr Hitler, Tell that to the Polish. Tell that to the Jews." (among other things.)
"I Hope the Russians Love their Children Too" by Sting about nuclear war and it's effects.
"Life During Wartime" by Talking Heads about an imagined revolutionary group/individual in the USA

Scott Miller and the Commonwealth. Scott Miller has a history degree from William and Mary and has a number of historical songs including several civil war songs, a song about the red ball express, a song about a southern boy on a Navy ship at Layte Gulf, and a biography of Sam Houston.

If you like Americana roots rock, definitely check out Scott Miller

If you want authentic tunes and lyrics that sound right for the period then Strawhead are the ones to listen to. THeir songs are mainly but not exclusively about the English Civil War. They have also released Victorian ballads and sung about pre-ECW battles and events. Their version of the (authentic) Agincourt ballad is a particular favourite of mine..

Definitely Strawhead

Straw head? I gotta seek them out……..

97th Regimental.

Country Joe McDonald did an album in 1971 called "War!War!War! Just him an acoustic guitar,IIRC. Lyrics were from "Songs of a Red Cross Man" by Robert W. Service,not a "Major Poet",perhaps,but then lesser poems often make better song lyrics:

"So here's my sheaf of war-torn verse,
And some is bad,and some is worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,
You needn't read that part of it.

For you yourself might mutter,when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate,
To where the dripping surgeons wait."