Five Finger Death Punch bassist Chris Kael caught up with Loud TV at France’s Hellfest to talk all things AfterLife.
On the band dynamic in 2022:
“Zoltan [Bathory] has talked about sometimes you’ve just got to do things to keep the band moving forward and keep spirits high and energies high and my god with Andy [James] and Charlie [Engen] in here now, fresh blood, they’re both incredibly talented. My god just the shredders out of both of them.”
“I knew Andy was going to be incredible when he was doing the Sham Pain solo and the very first time that he ever played it in a rehearsal – there is an echo that is on the original – Andy didn’t know there was an echo effect on there and played the whole thing without an echo pedal. I was like ‘My God! I think Andy you’re doing just fine Sir.'”
“Same with Charlie. Charlie’s just like a machine back there. He’s got a Doctorate in rhythm and is highly intelligent and just the personalities in this band and the way things are working is going along with the album title, AfterLife. We had this thing before and that part of the band is no longer there so this is a whole new life, after what we were doing before. Just the spirits are awesome.”
“The whole pandemic, as terrible as it was, gave everyone a chance to kind of breathe and really, for me specifically, it gave me a whole new appreciation for everything. I didn’t realise I had the attachment to being Chris Kael from Death Punch until Death Punch was no longer there for me to be apart of because everything was taken away and you couldn’t do anything for two years. It really made me appreciate it… its just been awesome getting back out here and what a way to get into the swing of things than doing the European Festival run with all these wonderful bands. It’s like a European Band Camp again, it’s nice.”
On his own contribution to the new Five Finger Death Punch album:
“I have a song on this record that I wrote the music for! It’s called ‘Gold Gutter’ on there. I wrote quite a few songs over the break. I went through a break up in May of 2020, had that whole theraputic purge and put it all into music and got a song on the new record which I’m incredibly happy about. I love the record but the breakdown in this song is my favourite breakdown of record – although I am a little biased!”
“Collectively its been over the years, I’m backing up Ivan [Moody] and doing the whole live thing doing vocals on there but I had been not exactly sober for many years. Once I got sober I remember one of the first things I was scared about was ‘Oh I’m not going to be able to be creative. I’m not going to be able to write.’ and then I was like ‘Hang on, you haven’t written anything in like four years. What the hell are you worried about!?’. As soon as I got sober, everything, again talking about flow in the universe, it was really flowing through me. I took full advantage of being home. I was playing guitar about six to eight hours a day probably and was just slamming through songs. I think I wrote 14 in total. One’s on the new record right now and fingers crossed that after, AfterLife, maybe there will be some more of Chris Kael’s records on there. That’s up to you guys!”
On how he would describe AfterLife:
“It’s one of those things where we’ve been doing this a long time. This is our ninth record now so we do what we do and we do it well. We’re doing things right in the eyes of the people and in the eyes of us as well. It’s one of those things where we’ve gone with our own intuition and continued to grow as musicians and just being in such a good place right now. Everything flowed on this record, just a nice cohesion of all the talents in this band coming together and doing this new record.”
“You’re going to get stuff you expect from Death Punch on there. There’s a song on there called ‘Times Like These’ on the record that is going to be a monster. There’s probably four or five monsters on this thing. I think we’ve got 15 number ones in a row right now, I’m going go ahead and say it, I’m going for. lets call it 18. 18 in a row, judging from the other songs that we have that are t coming out on this record. I live in Vegas and I’m a gambling man, put your money on it.”