Discover more about Zoltan’s life before Five Finger Death Punch took off including the only thing that would make him cut the dreads off. You don’t want to miss this.
“Every jump is like ‘Why am I doing this??'”@ZoltanBathory of @FFDP tells @loz_guest what it’s like driving his monster truck, Knucklehead!
— Kerrang! Radio (@KerrangRadio) April 24, 2024
Hear more from their chat in Loz’s show every day this week from 2pm
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Kerrang! Radio has aired part two of their exclusive interview with 5FDP’s Zoltan Bathory. In this segment Zoltan talks about life before Five Finger Death Punch including ambitions of being an astronaut. He also recalls a time on tour when he was trying to call the International Space station! Also covered, Zoltan talks about his love for all things speed from Lamborghini’s to renting fighter jets and more!
Check out the transcript of the interview below [transcribed by FFDP UK] or keep scrolling to listen to the full segment yourself. The segment with Zoltan begins from approximately 66 minutes into the show onwards.
On working in the space industry before the band took off:
I used to work in the space industry before the band blew up, oh yeah, for years and years and years. I worked specifically in the private sector. I did work on some project that was commissioned for NASA which means they basically hired third party companies to do certain things, so I was working on projects like that. I was working on a flying car, a flying motorcycle – it eventually became – I have patents in aviation and all that stuff, in telecommunication and computer science, and so that’s what I was doing before the band and even during the band.
There was an event when I was actually talking to a friend of mine who’s an astronaut, and she was on the Space Station, it’s a real true story, so I’m in the back of the bus and I’m talking on a phone and connected to the space station. The space station and ISS has like a 14-minutes about time before it’s out of range and the band is like swinging from chandeliers, screaming about and throwing bananas at each other and I started yelling, ‘I can’t hear a word. I’m on the phone with the space station and I have like seven minutes left.’ and they were all looking at me like ‘what!?’ but it was real. It was funny.
I was there when SpaceShipOne, before Virgin Galactic, before Richard Branson brought Scale Composites. Scale Composites was a private space company run by Burt Rutan who’s a airplane designer. I was there both times when SpaceShipOne took off and landed. The first time and the second time, they won the Ansari X-Prize, which was $10million for the first privately built space ship. I was working for Ansari Space Alliance. I was part of that whole thing where private businesses started.
I fly airplanes, I flew fighter jets, not professionally but I rented fighter jets, so this is not like a crazy thing for me. So yeah there will be space dreams in there at one point, not like I’m going to pilot the thing but I want to definitely be part of that.
It’s like if you’re alive for the next ten years, with what medical science is doing right now, it’s incredible, then probably you’re going to be able to live another 50, 60, 100 years, who knows, things are getting reversed, aging is getting reversed so if we don’t screw this up, if the politicians don’t light this planet on fire, then in our lifetimes, it is more than possible that we will have transit back and forth between Mars, we’re going to have lunar bases and space tourism will be the thing. Big old space industries were designing this 20 years ago so this thing has been in the works for a long time behind the scenes so this will happen in our lifetime.
When you said 30 years ago that you wanted to be an astronaut people would be like ‘That’s cute. You’re a space cadet already’ but today this achievable.
On the only thing that would make him cut his trademark deadlocks:
If it comes to that [becoming an astronaut/going to space] I’ll cut, for that I’ll cut my hair. For me putting on a space helmet because I have to for that, I’ll cut it. I didn’t cut my hair since I was 16 years old, 26 years I’ve had dreads.
On whether he’s been in ‘The Vomit Comet’:
There are two of them. There’s a Russian one and there’s an American one. Zero G. Actually a very good friend of mine is involved in that.
Funnily [enough], I didn’t do it yet however I have experienced zero g because I fly planes. I have experience 7-8g’s and also experienced zero g’s. My girlfriend flies, so the only argument we’ve ever had in ten years is who flies the plane. I’m not even kidding. We don’t argue about anything else but who flies the plane. I’m like ‘Man, I don’t want to sit in the jump seat holding your purse’ anyway, what she does if I fall asleep, she drops the plane so I levitate and hit my head. And she’s actually done that to me.
On his need for speed:
Yes I had a Lamborghini and now I’m team Ferrari so I have a Ferrari 488. I go to the race tracks and race but I don’t take mine around there. They’re always like ‘You have your own!’ and I’m like ‘I’m going to burn the brakes on yours, not mine.’ So I race that.
I race monster trucks. I have a monster truck called Knucklehead. It’s a 1700hp monster truck and you know how they drive over double-stacked buses, you take off flying like 15ft in the air, when that happens, it’s funny actually, sometimes as I’m flying through the air, there’s that moment of ‘Man I’m going to land in about three seconds and it’s going to hurt, I’m going to feel my spine compress for no apparent reason. Why am am doing this!?” Almost every jump is like ‘Why am I doing this! Ahh here it comes! Bam!’
I’ve had seven professional races with the monster truck so far. So yeah [I like] things that go fast, things [that are] interesting.