Andy James runs through how he came to join Five Finger Death Punch, his input in ‘AfterLife’, working with Kevin Churko, his gear and setup and more with Guitar Interactive Magazine.
In this exclusive interview, Guitar Interactive Magazine catch up with Five Finger Death Punch’s Andy James covering the journey which ultimately landed him the gig – covering rehearsals, learning the bands setlist, his first 5FDP show, recording ‘AfterLife’ and more. Also covered Andy offers insights into his creative process, his playing and solo albums, collaborations with renowned producers and of course, his signature gear.
On his journey to joining Five Finger Death Punch:
It kind of started in April 2019, sometime around there, I got a late night message in my Inbox on Instagram from Zoltan [Bathory], who I didn’t know was following me on Instagram or anything like that, and we just started chatting. He asked me if there were any guitar players that I knew that were kind of like European shredders that weren’t really doing anything or looking for a band, major record deal, tours, the whole thing.
And so I was kind of racking my brains thinking ‘well all the guys that I know, they’re already busy doing stuff.’ and then as the conversation progressed I sort of said to him like ‘Look is there anything that I might be interested in doing?’ because I wasn’t really doing a whole lot at that point, just my own stuff, which I’ve always been doing over the years and then I was doing this other band weirdly, which involved one of Five Finger Death Punch’s ex-bass players, I was kind of doing that for five minutes, we shot a video in LA, it wasn’t really doing anything, so at that point I was kind of like a free agent.
Eventually, I got it out of him [Zoltan Bathory] that the band he was looking to recruit for and that and then he put me in touch with them, kind of fast forward a little bit, I got in touch with them, we hit it off, the band was actually the Butcher Babies so I’d heard of them, I knew who they were, weirdly enough I’d actually played some of their music a week before Zoltan got in touch with me because I was like, I don’t know why, I just decided to check it out, but it’s kind of weird how that sort of worked, like a week later I’m getting in touch about possibly joining that band.
The first time I met Zo was in Arizona in a studio where they [Butcher Babies] were recording one of their soon to be singles at that point and I was just laying down some guitar and stuff. I was kind of in the studio with them already going through a sort of audition process anyway and then throw in Zo into the mix, from a band I was already a big fan of, and then I’m sitting there trying to play stuff and not fuck it up, so it was like a bit of a weird scenario I found myself in where everything could have just fallen apart.
I didn’t hear anything for ages. I think I came back to the UK, did some bits and pieces, and then I came back to LA again to do some stuff with the Butcher Babies, we had Dimebash which was part of [the] NAMM show, the show was mine and Ricky’s introduction. Ricky was the bass player they [Butcher Babies] were getting so we joined at the same time so that was the announcement of the new line-up [for Butcher Babies] and everything.
It wasn’t long after that before I got a text message from Zo asking me about how well I can remember music and how fast can I learn and I was just like ‘why are you asking?’ and he was just like, ‘I might need you to learn our whole live set’. I was like ‘Okay!’
So I finished that phone call and I didn’t get any sleep that night, I was just going through all the stuff because I knew all the songs, I’d just never played them so I had to sit down and figure them out. I know they play in Baritone tuning, so it’s like six strings tuned to B-standard and I play seven string predominantly, so I was thinking like ‘well I’m in the right tuning’ but I didn’t know if any of this stuff would transpose that well. Luckily it did. [But] I had to work around a few different things.
There’s a solo for a song called ‘Lift Me Up’ where it’s kind of like a Van Halen arpeggio styled thing at the 12th fret so it’d be like 12, 15 and then 19 and it’s over the high E and the B string but in that tuning. So obviously I was in standard tuning trying to figure out how to fucking play that thing so it’s just like this isn’t really going to work because I’d have to stretch from like the 8th fret, or something, all the way up and my hands just aren’t that big! So yeah there [were] a few problems to get past!
It wasn’t definite he was just like well look, just learn the stuff and see how you get on. Anyway, the following day, I got another text message saying ‘Okay, we definitely need you to come to Europe, how do you feel!?’. I was just like ‘Yeah, yeah cool. I’ve spent the night learning the stuff, I think I’m alright with it.’ and he went ‘Yeah, well there’s a plane ticket waiting for you at LAX, just go and check in.’
[It] was the first time I’d ever flown first class, thinking my first gig with them was going to be Wembley Arena. (Laughs) So no pressure. By the time I got there I was maybe 60 or 70 percent, so I probably could have got through the gig by the skin of my teeth but not confidentially.
The vibe was pretty good when I got in there and I remember when I got around to do doing my first show with Five Finger Death Punch, I think it was Hamburg in Germany, I remember Ivan and Zo, they both sat me down in Zo’s dressing room and said ‘We want you to do well. We’re not going to be judging you or anything like that, we know you’ve come in and had to have this mammoth task ahead of you, just go up and there and enjoy it.’
They were really cool about it but I put a lot of pressure on myself to try and be as professional as I can. So obviously I wasn’t going to take it for granted that it was going to go alright, you know what I mean? We hadn’t even played together as a band. We’d had a mock rehearsal with some Roland cubes and a bass amp and that was about it. It was [almost] like a live rehearsal. There was a soundcheck that we did in the day, but I hadn’t used in-ears before so I was trying to get my head around that.
This could have gone either way but all those years of doing pub and club gigs using eye contact, the old school way of being able to communicate between a band… if there’s footage of that show, you’ll probably see me moving a lot towards the drum kit to Charlie [Engen].
[Andy’s first show with Five Finger Death Punch ended up being the bands show in Hamburg in 2020 and you can hear more about his journey into the band by listening to the full interview which covers his rehearsals, getting more comfortable with the band, knowing Charlie Engen pre-Five Finger Death Punch though a Scale The Summit tour, landing the 5FDP gig before the pandemic hit and more.]
On developing songs for ‘AfterLife’ with Five Finger Death Punch during lockdown:
I managed to get out there [to the USA] in 2021. moved in with Zo for a bit because I didn’t have anywhere to stay or anything. I lived there for about six months and during that six months we did photoshoots, we did a video for a song called ‘Darkness Settles In’, which was off their [Five Finger Death Punch’s] previous record [F8] that I wasn’t on but I was in the music video.
We started writing some ideas and me and Zo got much more time to hang out and spend together and see how musically we would gel. Towards the end of 2021 we started doing what ended up being ‘AfterLife’.
I didn’t really know if I was going to be a huge part of making that record or not. I didn’t push the issue. I wasn’t trying to make waves. I was more of the mind of just letting things organically pan out and just see how that would go. I didn’t want to tread on any toes or anything because obviously they had eight records out at that point, gold and platinum records and stuff, so it’s like ‘they don’t need any input from me, they know what they’re doing!’. So it was more a case of like if I’m asked.
But in the meantime, Zo had a studio in his house and I was kind of like beavering away. I had a folder of 20, 21 demos and stuff that I was doing anyway, just in case because I didn’t want to be in a situation where they were like ‘Okay, you got any ideas.’ and I’d just be sitting there going ‘Uh… No?’ and look completely useless. So at least I’d stock-piled some ideas that might have been useful for the recording should I be asked.
That kind of did happen actually. Once they had been in the studio, Zo and Kevin [Churko] and the other guys [in Five Finger Death Punch], once they had exhausted a lot of the ideas they wanted to work on, there were still holes in the album that needed to be filled and they were just thinking, ‘well you know you’ve done plenty of records yourself, have you got any ideas.’ So I took my little folder of ideas to the studio and sat there with Kevin and we went through them. I think maybe two or three ideas were then worked up into songs.
I mean, they went through a lot of changes, so I can’t sit here go I wrote that song, that song and that song, but there’s songs where I had definite influence over the idea and the initial inspiration and kind of built on it from there.
Guitar wise like solos and stuff, I was pretty much left to my own devices. There were a few suggestions here and there from Kevin. I think there’s one song on [AfterLife] called ‘Blood and Tar’ where I started the solo a little bit differently than he had an idea for, he was kind of like ‘maybe try and outline the riff with the solo before going into any bit you want to do.’
It felt weird [initially] to be taking direction like that. For all the records that I’ve done, it’s just me with a computer or whatever, or me in the studio once doing solo stuff. Before that, I’ve been in bands where either the producer or the band has never really said okay we want it kind of like this. They’ve sort of let me get on with it and then I’m left to my own devices of vetting process of whether I like it or not, or whether it serves the song or not.
When you’re in those situations, my attitude is always just to be a student at the game. You obviously know that these guys know what they’re doing. Even though I’m a fairly competent guitar player, there’s still going to be things to learn. 90 per cent of the solo writing process [for Five Finger Death Punch] was me submitting what I thought was good for the song.