Five Finger Death Punch’s Zoltan Bathory on Bringing Metal to a New Generation
It wasn't that long ago that Five Finger Death Punch was a new band with a vision -- to bring metal back to the masses the way that it should be. 2007's 'The Way of the Fist' album started laying the groundwork for the group, and six years later they are now sharing stages with "The Metal God" himself Rob Halford and seemingly have their pick of special guests for the upcoming 'The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell' double album.
Noisecreep recently spoke with Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Zoltan Bathory at the Mayhem Festival tour opener about how it feels to fulfill some of the dreams the band had laid out in their early days. A portion of our talk can be read below.
I remember talking to you on the very first record, "The Way Of The Fist" and how excited you were about bringing your love of metal to the masses.
We've been here forever, man you and I!
And at that point, how much you really wanted to bring heavy metal back, old school metal, and now that you are here a handful of albums in, would you ever in your wildest dreams imagine how this has turned out?
No, this is going to be absolutely perfect because I talked to you about this so we have had this conversation. Now fast-forward 6-7 years and here we are doing a song with Rob Halford. To me, it is exactly what we wanted. Here we are a new school band, we are the new generation of heavy metal and we are again blessed, lucky, hard workers, however you want to put it, we are a extremely successful right now. We have the ears of the kids; we have the ears of this new generation of audience. This is our responsibility to bring Rob Halford in and do a song together. This is the new meets the guy who started this whole thing. There are just a couple of guys that started this whole thing. I think this is a perfect circle.
There are kids who don't know who Rob Halford is and they will. All of the guys who have been here, like us, who grew up on this s---, we are like, 'Oh my God that is Rob f---ing Halford.' So I think what we said back then, this is what I meant. Now we are doing it. It took us what, 6 or 7 years but we are here and doing it.
Rob Halford isn't the only metal legend on the band's upcoming album either, as the group also welcomed Sepultura and Soulfly great, Max Cavalera, to lay down some guest vocals on the disc. In addition, the double album will also feature guest turns from past tourmate Maria Brink of In This Moment and a buzz-generating collaboration with Tech N9ne.
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