Ivan Moody recently made a guest appearance on Whiplash with Full Metal Jackie on Southern California’s 95.5 KLOS radio station talking about 5FDP’s upcoming show at The Forum in LA, the bands new album F8 and more.

On how new found clarity has changed his approach as vocalist and a lyricist:
“The clarity has definitely made me open my eyes to who I really am, which in turn helps of course with music and art. And that’s another part of it, is getting in back in touch with my love for art and for music. I think for the longest time I had lost touch with that.”
“I know Zo [Zoltan Bathory] and I disagree on this, but those last two albums after Wrong Side [Of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell Volumes 1 & 2], there were pieces of that were very shadowed to me. I truly just sifted through it. I would make a song and then go to next song. It was more about what that emotion was in the moment. I didn’t really latch onto it. It wasn’t a story so to speak.”
“Wrong Side to me was the last story I wrote. It just happened to come in two chapters. Where as in F8, to me, front to back, each song, they’re individual stories and I dug so deep and looked so hard at myself to find those places and those answers if you will and those questions, that without that clarity… I really started to spiral outward looking for what was inward. How odd is that, right?”
“I started looking everywhere else except for the one place I needed to that was inside of me. If you look at the artwork, it has the circle of eight and there’s definitely some hidden gems within there that Zo and I have decorated it with, and again those are all pieces of ourselves.”
“There was just so much involved with it and I think releasing those binds that alcohol had on me really gave me a sense of who I was again and made me understand that the love of music and art came to me the moment I was born. It had nothing to do with alcohol or drugs or anything.”
“Rob Zombie told me once. He said ‘If you can’t be crazy without being **** you weren’t crazy to begin with. And that to me struck a chord. And so I wanted to know, not only how well do I know myself, how much do I love my art, how much do I love music and how much of me is truly “crazy” and how much of it is just one diabolical question.”
“I think n having alcohol in my life has definitely helped me form some sort of… I would say safety net, so that I can better explore myself and the things that make me an individual without hindering any of those said above things in the process.”
On what he understands about himself now that he didn’t before sobriety:
“The short picture of it is that sobriety has helped me figure out how to be Ivan without any ouside influence. To answer my own questions and to live by my own word and to understand that I am human and an individual as everyone else is.”
“I think the gift about sobriety is, for me anyway, the true gift of sobriety was realising I wasn’t the only one because you do feel very quarantined and very in yourself and you stop exploring other people.”
“You start thinking ‘Well nobody’s going to understand me’. It’s like having continuous teenage years that you just never let go of that pointing the finger thing.”
“If anything being sober has definitely helped me to realise that again questions are okay, it’s the answers you have to be wary of. I’ve learnt how to ask those questions as well as answer them without depending on outside sources to influence me.”
On what makes his self-reflective lyrics so relatable to fans:
“I don’t know. I would be lying if I said otherwise. I know that there are artists out there that speak in poems I guess you’d say. Every artist is different. Everybody creates differently.”
“For me I speak without hindering… I don’t want you to hear something in such a poetic fashion. Okay here’s a great example. I love the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Anthony Kiedis is a poet. He writes in very abstract and loud kind of ways where he gives you a picture but there are so many different directions you can answer that with. He leaves it open for interpretation.”
“I am very to the point whether it be an issue of pain, happiness and everything in between. But I do add more of… I don’t know why people gravitate to my ****. I don’t. Because it’s from my heart.”
“It’s just I speak from my heart. Whatever I feel comes out on paper. And luckily for me I have an attraction and a relationship with music so it’s easier related, not only to the listener, but to myself.”
“I grew up on Dr. Seuss books. That’s a big thing for me. I love rhyme schemes and I like play on words. The Riddler was my favourite villain going up as well as The Joker for those reasons.”
“I just thought that the human vocabulary is so colourful and there’s so many way to adjust it and manipulate it to where it’s fun and not get lost in the black and white blase way of talking.”
“When I write, I turn it in to fun for myself. ‘I spoke to God today and she sounded just like me.’ Now I just took a very simple setence and I made it rhyme. It’s like that whole joke ‘You’re a poet and you didn’t know it’. It’s very much like that. I just have fun with it. “
“You look at Rap artists and Hip-Hop artists, I really think that they have it down. I was a huge fan of the Beastie Boys growing up. I love Eminem. I gravitate towards that style of writing.”
“I think a lot of Rock singers are more worried about the ability to write a poem and put it into a song than they are having fun with it sometimes and I’m just not that way. “
“I like to entertain myself as well as the people around me with it. I jus have fun with it and I think rhyming schemes are really a cool way to do it.”
On bandmate Zoltan Bathory:
“Zo is a very artistic person – I think people over look that for whatever reason and I think the Internet has a lot to do with that. Zo is a very in-depth creature if anything. He really helped me settle in and season what I wanted to expose to the world whilst still keeping some of the things that I need to hold to myself. “
Listen to the full episode featuring Ivan Moody on Whiplash with Full Metal Jackie here:
Five Finger Death Punch recently announced that its Spring 2020 U.S. tour originally scheduled to kick off in Sunrise, FL on April 8 and run through May 20 in St. Paul, MN has being rescheduled to fall 2020.
Five Finger Death Punch Rescheduled Tour Dates:
Sept 28, 2020 Sunrise, FL BB&T Center
Sept 30, 2020 Atlanta, GA Infinite Energy Arena
Oct 2, 2020 St. Louis, MO Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Oct 4, 2020 Birmingham, AL Oak Mountain Amphitheater
Oct 5, 2020 Nashville, TN Bridgestone Arena
Oct 8, 2020 San Antonio, TX AT&T Center
Oct 9, 2020 Houston, TX Toyota Center
Oct 11, 2020 Fort Worth, TX Dickies Arena
Oct 14, 2020 Denver, CO Red Rocks Amphitheater
Oct 16, 2020 Portland, OR Veterans Memorial Coliseum
Oct 18, 2020 Tacoma, WA Tacoma Dome
Oct 20, 2020 San Diego, CA Viejas Arena
Oct 22, 2020 Los Angeles, CA The Forum
Oct 23, 2020 Phoenix, AZ Talking Stick Resort Arena
Oct 25, 2020 Kansas City, MO Sprint Center
Oct 27, 2020 Baltimore, MD Royal Farms Arena
Oct 28, 2020 Newark, NJ Prudential Center
Oct 30, 2020 Pittsburgh, PA PPG Paints Arena
Nov 1, 2020 Camden, NJ BB&T Pavilion
Nov 2, 2020 Worchester, MA DCU Center
Nov 5, 2020 Chicago, IL Allstate Arena
Nov 6, 2020 St. Paul, MN Xcel Energy Arena
Nov 8, 2020 Detroit, MI Little Caesars Arena
Nov 9, 2020 Cincinnati, OH Heritage Bank Center
*Cover photo by Harry Reese Film & Photo