Zoltan Bathory talks all things ‘AfterLife: Deluxe’, collaborating with DMX, his desire to collaborate with other artists on future tracks and whether the band is recording a new album in this exclusive interview with Kerrang! Radio.
Loz Guest from the UK’s Kerrang! Radio recently caught up with Five Finger Death Punch’s Zoltan Bathory for a mega interview spanning several episodes of the ‘Kerrang! Radio Afternoon Show’ talking about everything from DMX to the Five Finger Death Punch Knucklehead Monster truck (remember that!?)
The first episode featuring Zoltan aired on Wednesday 24 April 2024 and a transcript of the episode (transcript by FFDP UK) can be viewed below or you can keep scrolling to listen to the episode. The segment with Zoltan begins at approximately 68 minutes into the show.
On how ‘This Is The Way ft. DMX’ came to be:
It was the same thing here man. It took us, lets see, about seven years to do this, like imagine about five or six years ago some time around there, maybe seven. We’ve been talking about this, DMX was kind of the rapper that we always thought is sort of like a metalhead of that community. The delivery, that whole raw energy, the dog bark, the growl, you know what I mean? So we were always talking about it, “Like man you know who would be really cool to work with? That would be really cool.”
He wasn’t available, the same thing here, [there were] a lot of moving elements and conversations started with our people, with their people and you know how that goes. And then, eventually, when the time [when it] would have been a possibility, when this conversation was already opened, unfortunately, DMX was taken from the world. So he’s gone. That moment for us was okay how do we still do this with the utmost respect? And how do we still do this when this is an unfortunate situation? But it was on the bucket list and since we were already knee deep in this conversation we ended up managing to still do the track. Unfortunately, he never got to hear it.
On DMX and 5FDP’s music creating ‘the perfect storm’
That’s kind of what we thought it would be. That’s why we thought that it would be really cool to do this because we worked with Tech 9ine, for example, that was amazing, so this is not a new thing for us.
We collaborate with all kinds of genres, we have a very eclectic taste, so we listen to all kinds of stuff and as I said, DMX is one of our favourites and so we thought ‘man this would be perfect.’ and it just fit.
On the music video for ‘This Is The Way ft. DMX’:
That was another big question mark. How do we do this video respectfully. How do with this video to the track of an artist that’s gone. Like how are you going to do the video. So there were all kinds of conversations like what would be the way and then all of a sudden, a friend of mine sparked the idea and said ‘hey guys, why don’t you reach out to Hype Williams?’ and we went ‘Oh my god, we did not think of this!’ So we reached out to Hype Williams.
For people who don’t know who Hype Williams is, Hype Williams was one of the main characters in building hip hop culture in the 90s. Like most of the videos you’ve seen from Tupac Shakkur to Biggie to DMX, he was making these music videos. There was a waiting list for working with Hype Williams. He’s a visionary, he’s an artist, he’s a designer, he’s a film maker (he made the movie ‘Belly’ with DMX’) and so it was like oh my god this makes all the sense in the world.
We reached out to Hype and sent him the track and that was an awesome moment in our lives I’ll tell you this because we sent Hype the track and the track is about three minutes long and probably three minutes and two seconds later he calls, so that means he had just listened to the track and he weirdly calls and says, ‘Guys, I have to be the director of this video.’
On whether the band would dip into hip-hop with other artists on future songs:
Yeah, I mean as I said, when it comes to Hip-Hop, like Dr. Dre, for example ‘The Chronic’, which came out in 1992 I think, incredible, one of my favourite albums still to this day. I would love to work with him. Eminem is incredible, you know? Run DMC… and I think it’s about time again that these two worlds start colliding.
I don’t really want to talk about politics but a lot of division is happening, that’s not by accident, and us artists are probably the most powerful force against them. When we come together and say ‘na na na you’re not playing this game, again!’. I think that these cross collaborations are good for the world and it’s another moment of unity and another moment of resistance – that was what heavy metal and hard rock was talking about right – and what is hip-hop? Exactly the same. It’s the voice of the rebellion.
Hip-hop, especially late 80s, early 90s that was a change coming, a different wind, a revolt in some way. So to me these two genres are very much parallel in that way. There are genres out there to entertain, you know there are genres out there… you go to a club to dance and have a good time and there are genres that are specifically a tool or a voice for something. I always felt that hip-hop, hard rock/heavy metal have this common area and that’s what I meant, especially in a time of division, is the time that these two genres can come together. So yes any collaboration that makes a difference 100% and yes absolutely I would like to [do more collaborations with other artists].
On whether Five Finger Death Punch is working on a new album:
We of course always write and there are ideas going into the vault, we’re starting to work on some stuff but there’s a massive touring schedule ahead of us so this European tour is happening, we’ll obviously record some stuff on the road, ideas this and that again going into the vault, and then, we have the American tour, that’s another few months, so we only have a couple of weeks, that ends somewhere in September, November, I don’t even know, October I think, maybe, somewhere there. I don’t even look at it, I just see that it’s a long touring schedule. So once we’re done with that we’re probably going to go and record the new album, number ten. It’s going to be X, the number 10! [in latin numerals] (laughs).