FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH

“This is a great f**kin’ tour, an amazing tour!” says Fiver Finger Death Punch bassist, Matt Snell, about the Mayhem Rockstar Energy Festival during the after show BBQ in West Palm Beach. Death Punch is a Metal band which hails from the Los Angeles scene, combining elements of Thrash Metal and Hardcore, with fast leads, catchy riffs, pounding double bass and a blend of rough and melodic vocals. They have toured with the likes of Korn, Disturbed, and The Family Values last summer. The band has even routed throughout the country as headliners selling out venues on their own with a growing legion of fans, known as the “Knuckleheads”.

The band has just wrapped up the first annual Rockstar bill, which reunited them again with their friends in Disturbed, and many others including DragonForce, Mastadon, Machine Head, Walls of Jericho and headliners, Slipknot. Death Punch tore down the Jagermeister stage day by day, building their machine nationwide, and has been annihilating ‘Headbanger’s Ball’ on MTV2 with their video for “The Bleeding”. Despite this overload of success, the band is actually only one year old.

I spoke to Mr. Snell, and got the inside scoop behind the Fist.

How did Five Finger Death Punch come to exist?

We’re just a bunch of dudes who wanted to do our thing, finally, and for what ever reason we all found each other at the right time and made this band, and it’s working. It’s amazing. I have to chalk the whole thing up to the fact that when we set out to build it, we said it had to be real. It had to be the music that we wanted to put the CD in and listen to. We weren’t like, “We’re bros let’s make a band”, we came in as a business and now we’re building that.

Can you give us some background on the band?

Ivan Moody, our singer, was formerly of the band Motograter. Zoltan, our guitarist, formerly of UPO. Our other guitarist, Darrell formerly of W.A.S.P, and I’ve been in every band in the world. I am a bass wh*re. I’ll play with anybody, I just love music. Jeremy has recorded more records in studios in L.A. than you could ever count. So you can’t even go into his discography, it’s huge.

What are some of your influences?

Personally, I came up on Cliff and Steve. Any bass player would know that reference. Musically, it’s hard to say. I was a Jazz student for 10 years so that’s probably why I play bass. If we go modern, Disturbed has been family to us, they have helped us out so much. We owe them the world. Korn has taken us out twice, they’re family. They treat us really well; we recorded all of our singles in their studio.

Describe the overall atmosphere between the members of the band and what Five Finger Death Punch means to you.

Like I said, we actually met as business partners when we put the band together, so we actually became friends as we toured. So our first two tours were battles, they were horrible. Everybody was trying to find their ground and make sure it worked. Now we’re family and we get along, everything is good. But Five Finger Death Punch is not only my family, it’s my life. I know that sounds cliché and boring but it’s the truth. We’re looking forward to a long, long prosperous future, and trying to make it where Five Finger Death Punch is a household name, that’s the goal.

How was the writing process of your debut album, ‘The Way of the Fist?’

There were a lot of arguments that went down with that. Some of us liked this or that. We threw a lot of songs away in order to make the ten songs that hit the first record, let alone the thirteen that hit the second. Every song for us means something. It wasn’t done like ‘Here’s a recipe, here’s an ABC on how to make a hit’. It wasn’t like that. We just wrote a record, said we’re going to do what we want to do and hopefully people will like it, and they did. It’s kind of strange to walk into a place, and say “Really, we’re going to sell this? Really? A Metal band??” And it happens.

When will you be releasing the follow up to the debut album?

It’s ready, it’s just a matter of having time off long enough to sit in and record it. We’re booked all the way through the end of the year. But it will definitely be next year. Still there are lots of people who haven’t heard our record yet. We haven’t released it outside of the U.S., nor have we toured anywhere else, so we have to accommodate that first. But we’ve got buckets of material and are constantly writing. It’s about the next stage of Death Punch and what is the right thing to do. We have to sit on that for a minute.

Besides touring intensively, what else has the band been up to?

Just before we left this tour we did two videos. One for “Never Enough”, our latest single, and we did “The Way of the Fist”. That one we kind of did for ourselves, because that’s Five Finger Death Punch. So those videos are going to hit real soon. We have another single coming called, “Stranger Than Fiction”, which we will probably do a video for in the new 3 months or so. It’s a great song, and it’s on our re-release which came out about two months ago. Basically what we are trying to do is explore our every avenue we have.

How do you function differently than the average band?

We’re just trying to be Five Finger Death Punch. It’s funny cause people laugh at us because we’re this heavy band, and we come out and we’re laughing and telling jokes on stage, because we’re actually having fun. And to be this late in the cycle and still be able to have fun, that doesn’t happen anymore. Most of the bands up now are all so business oriented, they don’t get it. We did the business first and now we’re friends, so I think our way works a little bit better.

You’ve toured a lot with a handful of top notch bands, how did it go as headliners?

Very well! It’s very humbling to say, “Hey, you booked us at House of Blues New Orleans? Really?!” They tell us not to worry about it that it will be fine, and when I walk out on stage, it’s full. It’s happening. It’s happening day by day. We’re building our army, we have the knuckleheads, and they are our fans. It’s a very humbling experience to walk out and see that these people are actually connecting with our music and liking it. They are showing up, buying a ticket, coming in, and having a good time. You wish for this your whole life and when it happens you have to kind of step back and go, ‘Wow this is happening, right here right now’, and try to remember it. The only word that comes to mind every time is humbling.

You said you’re booked the rest of the year, what are the plans?

We have a headlining tour coming up in the fall. It’s a good chance for everybody to see a full Death Punch show. We are going to be doing an hour and 15 minutes every night, and we’re going to bring production, and play our whole set. And we’ll laugh, drink and have fun. That’s the point. We’re over the rockstar sh*t. We don’t care. It’s not about that. The direct support for us is In This Moment. I was actually in that band at one point. Chris [Hollwarth], the guitar player and I were in a band called Deadsett. So I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve partied with these guys for years and we always said that if it came to success we would stay together and we’re finally doing it and laughing about it.

 Any closing words for our readers out there?

Please come to the show, enjoy yourself, have fun. It’s going to be a great tour, there are going to be a lot of great bands. It’s a good bill – and I know, I was a concert going consumer for years, I get it. But this is a good bill, come check it out. Five Finger Death Punch wins!

Five Finger Death Punch will perform live with In This Moment, Bury Your Dead, and Another Black Day at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale on November 8, 2008.