Zoltan Bathory shares more ‘AfterLife: Deluxe’ nuggets, working with producer Kevin Churko over the past 15 years, as well as his admiration for Andy James in this brand new exclusive interview with The Loaded Radio Podcast.
In this interview, Zoltan Bathory shares insights into the band’s latest ventures, including their collaboration with the late rapper DMX on the bands brand new single ‘This Is The Way’ and the creative process behind the collaboration. He also gives his takes on the new acoustic tracks from ‘AfterLife: Deluxe’ and explains how these song originated on acoustic guitars back when the band first starting writing songs for the album.
Also covered, Zoltan gives the lowdown on the why the band has stuck with Kevin Churko for all their releases since ‘War Is The Answer’ (2009) and not deviated, as many bands do, to other producers. Finally, Zoltan shares his admiration for Andy James who has now been with the band for four years and explains what Andy brings to Five Finger Death Punch and his initial surprise that Andy was a fan of the bad before joining.
Check out some extracts from the interview below and keep scrolling to play the full interview on Spotify. You can also listen to the full interview with Zoltan via The Loaded Radio Podcast website.
On why the band continues to work with Kevin Churko:
In the very beginning, on the very first record, I did that record in my living room really, literally. ‘The Way of the Fist’ was recorded in my living room and then later on we went to the studio and recorded real drums and the vocals and then we came back to my house and did the rest of it there. Then we out and had it mixed and mastered. So it was all done that way. I recorded my own guitars.
Then on the second record [War Is The Answer], the same thing, I recorded my own guitars in my own studio and I would it bring it to the main studio. At the time we had Kevin [Churko]. We hired Kevin Churko to record the second album.
On the second album we already had a contract with Randy Staub, who mixed ‘The Black Album’ for Metallica. We really liked the sound. His mixes are amazing. So we had him hired but we wanted to record the album properly so we went to Kevin to do that. But I still recorded my guitars at home, and even on the third record [American Capitalist], I still did my own guitars and I would send him in the files, like ‘here’s the guitar recorded’ and somewhere halfway through the record [American Capitalist], I started to come to the studio to work with him [Kevin Churko] because I had my way, and just to put it in a nutshell, I pick up a drum beat and record 100 guitar riffs to it. Like okay from the hundred, I nailed number seven, number 18, 21 and 29. Like that was all. It’s not just a precision but there has to be a life and groove to that guitar riff. It has to be alive. It’s not always about the super precise things.
In fact, some musicians listening to this, when you’re panning guitars left and right, if they’re too close to each, like if it’s almost identical, you lose the stereo picture. You have to nail that like how these two sides of the stereo picture correlates to each other.
So when I went to the studio with Kevin, I know the guitar riffs that I knew that was right and he would pick, always, exactly the riffs that I thought was good, he would think those. So this is my personal picture, obviously, everyone in the band has a different working relationship with him but it’s usually a similar idea. Like you have a vocal take and he would know ‘that one’. It’s like when you have a symbiosis with somebody, I don’t have to explain to him, like ‘this, this and this riff’ because he already knew it. There was this natural… like as if he was in the band. That’s what it means to be in a band that the ‘other guy in your band’ plays the right thing.
There is no reason for us to work with someone else. He makes us the most efficient because he just knows exactly where we’re going, he’s transparent meaning whatever we create as a band, he doesn’t colour it too much. He’s not heavy handed producer that says ‘do this or do that’, he only does that if I ask him, ‘Hey Kevin do you prefer A, B or C’… or if Ivan and I have a disagreement, sometimes, rarely but sometimes in music we disagree, generally, he and I are very much the same when it comes to music but if we do have a difference, then we ask Kevin ”What do you think A, B, Ivan or me’ and then we go with that. That’s our law. Democracy works within a band.
It’s hard to find somebody like that. He’s one of the best sound engineers and producers in the world. He’s won every award there is to win and for us he’s like a family member who’s very easy to work with.
On Andy James being in Five Finger Death Punch:
Andy and I knew each other for a while before he was in the band and I was trying to help his career, trying to help him get into different bands, get him positions he can contribute into bigger bands and I was a fan of Andy James and Andy James was a fan of Five Finger Death Punch. That’s kind of how it came about.
Charlie [Engen], our drummer, was on tour before with Andy and we were in the studio and I was talking about guitar players and I played Andy James’ shreddage, which is insane, to Charlie. And Charlie was like ‘I know Andy, he’s a very good friend of mine. I was on tour with him and he’s a big ‘Death Punch’ fan.’ Which to me, I was kind of surprised at, because I always viewed all these elitist, “too precious”, are going to look at us and go ‘Oh this is commercial, this is selling records, we can’t like this, this sells records and regular people like this. We cannot be seen listening to Five Finger Death Punch that even my Grandma likes.”
Anyway, I was kind of surprised that Andy James was a huge fan. I’m like really!? That’s how we started a conversation and we became friends and eventually when the time came and we had to make a shift, he was the obvious choice. He’s one of the best guitar players on the planet. He’s insane. I like that he knows the records from the band inside out because he was a fan to begin with. Sometimes I’m asking him song titles ‘What was that song I forgot’ and he knows. We even have the same birthday, me and Andy, we’re both May 15 guys and it’s kind of a weird situation, so many synchronicities in there. It was meant to be… We work amazing together.