Five Finger Death Punch On Celebrating Twenty Years

0 0 6 minutes read

📝 usncan Note: Five Finger Death Punch On Celebrating Twenty Years

Disclaimer: This content has been prepared based on currently trending topics to increase your awareness.

After releasing 20 Years of Five Finger Death Punch – Best of Vol. 1 earlier this summer, the multi-platinum superstars announced a sequel appropriately titled Vol. 2, to be released October 24. The first single, “The End,” featuring BABYMETAL, is out today (September 5).

In a tale that has become very familiar in the music industry in recent years, the band has rerecorded a total of 30 of their biggest hits in response to their former label selling the band’s masters without the group’s knowledge.

I spoke with guitarist Zoltan Bathory about revisiting these songs two decades later and more.

Steve Baltin: It must be so interesting to look at all the changes from when you recorded these 20 years ago versus now.

Zoltan Bathory: Music changed massively when we switched off physical copies. When you switched to digital streaming, there was a solid eight -10 years when the music industry was freaking out about what to do. That’s where all these 360 deals came about, where they were trying to get into your merch and publishing. What came out on the other side is nobody has physical copies anymore. We sell vinyl’s because it’s collectible. But you have streaming services, which made music rental property now. So, it’s completely scrambled the music industry. That’s why you see these catalog sales because all of a sudden, a bank or anybody who’s not in the music industry can look at your catalog and say, “Okay, we have metrics. We know every year how many streams you had.” We know exactly how much music you sold because there’s a digital metric that they can record, and they can attach financial value to that, so they know exactly how much money you made every year. And now they look at it like, “Oh okay, it’s just like it’s a mortgage or it’s a reverse mortgage. It’s a rental property, so we can sell this because we know what it’s going to generate.” So that’s what changed. Artists now can sell their catalogues for millions, especially older artists that are maybe not going to be around for the next 20 years.

Baltin: When you went back and rerecorded this all these years later, did you find that the songs had changed for you, like certain songs either took on new meanings for you or that you appreciated in a different way?

Bathory: Basically, when you record something and you go into the studio it’s just you go into the lab, and you write the songs. That’s where you figure out how the song should be recorded but then after you live with the song for a while, like night three, it’s an interesting situation. Because like right now when we’re going back to the studio we live with these songs for so long if something changes a little bit It’s almost like, “Oh, that’s weird because you’re used to it in a certain way.” But I don’t have to write the song. We already wrote this song. In fact, so many of these songs we played live hundreds of times. So, when you go to the studio this time, it’s not recording and creating a song. It’s performing it. And I think that kind of came through the record. It has a little bit of a rawer, almost performance-like energy. So, there’s a difference between writing it and meticulously putting together every single bit and piece of the song versus going in. We play these songs on stage hundreds of times. Let’s go hit it.

Baltin: Were there some songs that as you put out more records eventually fell from the set? And so maybe some of them you hadn’t done in 10, 12 years.

Bathory: Oh, yes. Of course. And then you’re right. There were some songs like, “Oh man, I forgot about this one.” In like a hundred and whatever 80 songs, you’re going to go, “Oh man, I didn’t even listen to this one for like a couple of years.” So definitely there was that, but nostalgia really being like, “Wow, that was a pretty good song. I forgot about this.”

Baltin: Are there songs that now you would want to bring back to the live show because your view of it has changed?

Bathory: That’s also happening. We basically recorded volumes one and volume two. So, it’s 30 songs total. Literally we were like, “Man, we should put that in a set.” As we were doing it, it definitely brought back all the memories, remembering when we recorded this one or some of the songs we had to relearn like, “How did that go?” Because it’s been so long since some of the songs that we don’t play live we have to figure out what we played there.

Baltin: We talked about the meanings changing, but were there literal changes?

Bathory: As we recorded this, there are some differences. There are definitely some differences in the guitar leads. There are certain features, some things changed, even vocally, as we perform in this song, even the vocal lines, certain lines changed. I even recorded some of those lines the way that we do it live 15 years later. So, if you compare the original records to this, there are even lyrical changes, minor changes, but they’re different, because we did it how we did it on stage these days. So, there are changes in there.

Baltin: What prompted the changes?

Bathory: The very first record was done in my living room. I had a tiny low computer, very minimal gear, and I recorded all the guitars, bass, everything in my living room in Hollywood. I used to live in Hollywood. And then later on we went to the studio, did real drums, and we did the vocals in the studio, then we came back and mixed it on this little computer. So, it was a homemade record. Obviously, years and years later, we have big production, we have Kevin Churko, the producer, so everything sounds huge. Even though we were really proud of that record, it was an interesting experiment now that we’re going to record it with today’s technology. So, for example, the songs from the very first record, we felt like, oh yeah, this time we can make it bigger. Definitely sonically, when it came to songs from the first record, we were like, yeah, “It’s going to sound bigger and thicker.” So yeah, there are some of those moments where we felt like we can make this better.

Baltin: So many artists I’ve talked to have a hard time letting go of music because by nature all artists are perfectionists.

Bathory: The crazy thing about it, it gets more difficult when you have a song that you know that it’s really good, right? You have an idea like, “Man, this is such a good song and you don’t want to f**k it up. This is a diamond. I have to make sure that it’s absolutely perfect.” You actually have a much harder time with those songs because you understand the value. This could be the soundtrack to people’s lives. And then you stay with that song for years. We have some songs on record, like “Wrong Side of Heaven”, which is our biggest hit. I had that song almost 20 years. I just didn’t want to give it up. “The Bleeding,” the very first hit that we ever had. Same thing, 10 years before that song came out, I had it, and I didn’t want to put it on the record. And that was our breakthrough hit We almost didn’t put it on the record because I felt like this is special, I have to make sure that every piece of this is as good as it can be. Then you stay in the shed, and you keep polishing it and 10 years pass and you’re still doing it. So yeah, you have to let it go at one point.

Baltin: Is there anything you’d change about your career that led to rerecording these songs?

Bathory: We were very conscious of every step and even the contracts, this and that whatever happened. I wouldn’t have to go back and change it because I understand how this works. I understand that life is a chess game. And when this happens, it’s like, “Okay, that’s your move on the chessboard and now we’re going to do our move.” I’m a martial artist. All the people I ever fought with are worthy opponents. Even the relationship with the record label was a crazy funny one because we fought but we’re still stable. It’s just how the world operates, and we understood that so there was no emotion involved. We did what we needed to do.