Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Zoltan Bathory linked back up with Abe Kanan recently for an Audacy Check In, discussing the band’s upcoming world tour, and the mission while making new music!
Five Finger Death Punch founding guitarist Zoltan Bathory has confirmed the band is tapping back into the ferocious energy of their earliest records for their upcoming album.
The announcement follows the release of their new single, “Eye of the Storm”, which Bathory describes as a bridge between the heavier and lighter elements of the band’s catalog.
“We picked that song because that was one of the first ones that was ready from the batch,” Bathory said in a recent interview with Audacy. “Ivan [Moody] is actually in the studio right now, still recording vocals.”
Balancing the Sonic Spectrum
According to Bathory, the track choice was highly intentional to give listeners an accurate indicator of the broader project’s stylistic direction.
“That was kind of the song that we thought that would represent the upcoming album the best,” he revealed. “This is kind of a song in the middle, right? We have heavier stuff and we have a little bit lighter stuff, so that was right in the middle and that’s kind of like the idea there that ‘OK, let’s pick this one because it is a pretty good indicator of what’s coming,’ and it seems like everybody was super excited about it.”
Listeners tracking the single will notice a deliberate emphasis on the group’s foundational instrumentation.
“It’s a little bit heavier, a little bit more guitar,” Bathory described. “We’re kind of dipping back into the beginnings, the first two, three records, it has a similarity. Of course, you have to always progress, so we’re not going to go back and repeat that, but there is a little bit of that first, you know, three records aggression in this one.”
Inside the 5FDP songwriting vault
Bathory also opened up about the band’s songwriting process, which relies on a “vault” of riffs and tracks accumulated over many years—including hits like “Wrong Side of Heaven” and “The Bleeding,” which were written long before their official release. He explains that assembling a tracklist is like a puzzle that requires balancing heavy tracks against softer ballads.
“It has to kind of have the ups and downs,” Bathory said. “It has to have the super heavy stuff and it has to have a couple of ballads, so that’s always been the thing, and sometimes it just simply, you know, ‘OK, we have already two, three slow songs on this record, we have five more, but I can’t put it on the same record because it’s too much,’ right? So that’s how it works.”
He concluded: “Things are coming out of the vault, there are some new things, and then we look at what we have, and then assemble the record that we think is the right one for the times.”
Watch the full Audacy Check In interview with Zoltan Bathory: