"This album is a massive finger!"

Five Finger Death Punch will release their new album, War Is The Answer on September 21. Here's guitarist Zoltan Bathory's guide to their forthcoming album...

DYING BREED
“Even though this is the opening track it was actually the last song that we wrote for the record. I think that when you make a record it’s important to have a healthy balance of different types of songs, so when we wrote this we were looking for one more really fast, totally brutal song. It has a really big chorus but the verses are very in-your-face, and I think that it really sets the tone for the rest of the record.”

BULLETPROOF
“Vocally this is by far one of my favourite songs on the album. One of the problems that I’ve had in the past is that, being Hungarian, it can be difficult to fully understand what people are saying, but on this song Ivan [Moody] has done a really great job. He cuts up the words in a very strange way but it totally fits the song, which is a little over mid-tempo and very aggressive.”

HARD TO SEE
“I would say that this is a really complete song. Sometimes you write a song that right away feels almost perfect, and this is definitely one of them. It’s already been at #15 on the American radio charts, and some stations loved it so much that they actually started playing it a week earlier than they were supposed to. I’m really proud of that because this is not a commercial song by any means. It has some really nasty sounding riffs, and it has a lot of screaming and very aggressive vocals that usually wouldn’t be fit for radio at all.”

NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND
“Lyrically this is a song that has a very military based theme. It’s basically about how there is a big difference between politicians who start wars and the people who are on the front lines. That’s very important to us because we have a lot of fans who are serving overseas. It’s something that has always fascinated us, because it’s almost like a society and community in itself. It’s definitely a brotherhood, and that’s something that we wanted to point out to people who perhaps don’t think about it a lot. You can actually hear a real life transcript of someone in the army asking for a medical evacuation, so it has a very real edge to it.”

CROSSING OVER
“This is a song that kind of puts the brakes on a little bit. It starts with an acoustic guitar and has a pretty slow pace to it, and the overall vibe throughout is very, very dark. It has a blazing guitar solo, but I think it’s definitely designed to let people breathe a little bit. One of the biggest differences between European and American metal bands is that Europeans are very classical and like to have a lot of underlying harmonies, and this song is definitely one where I wanted to make sure that those elements were very much present.”

BURN IT DOWN
“Vocally this is the most relentless song that we’ve ever made. Usually Ivan will sing the chorus, but on this one he positively refused to do anything other than scream his balls off! He was like, ‘I’m fucking angry, so this song is going to be exactly the same.’ It’s mainly about how fucked up people can be, but also how a lot of the time it’s the people in power who are the most fucked up of all. It’s a song that can be taken on a political, social or personal level.”

FAR FROM HOME
“We’ve been kicking this song around for about two years, and until now we were never really sure what we would actually do with it. For a while we weren’t really sure if it was for us because it’s very light, but on our first record we had a song called The Bleeding which taught us that if you deliver a song in the right way then it doesn’t have to be heavy or fast. It has some acoustic elements in the beginning but it also has some orchestral strings that give it a really nice sound.”

MY OWN HELL
“This is another song that is definitely on the faster side of things. It has a really solid groove to it and even though I don’t always like using the word it’s definitely very catchy at times. Lyrically it’s about Ivan’s self-destructive nature. He definitely has multiple personalities that cause his life to be surrounded by chaos, and on this song he gives a really deep insight into the way that he is and the way that his mind works.”

FALLING IN HATE
“Spiritually I’d say it’s connected to a song that we had on the first record called Meet The Monster. Originally it was very doomy and slow, so we bumped it up just a tiny bit so that it has a bit more of a kick to it. I think that more than anything this song taught us that before we write and record in future we need to hook Ivan up with a really dysfunctional chick, because it seems to bring the best out of him on almost every level.”

WALK AWAY
“This is similar to Hard To See in the sense that I feel it’s a near-perfect song musically. Lyrically this is another one that deals with the chaos and fucked up nature of Ivan’s life. It’s mainly about relationships and how they always seem to go really badly for him. Sometimes it’s hilarious because you’ll see him and he’ll be like, ‘I’m seeing these four chicks right now, and I’m really into three of them.’”

CANTO 34
“The title for this actually comes from Dante’s Inferno. Seeing as we ended up recording in Las Vegas which is pretty much sin city it seemed like a very fitting title. It’s an instrumental track so it has absolutely no lyrics, but it’s perhaps a little bit faster than the type of instrumentals that most bands do. There are blazing guitar solos all over it.”

BAD COMPANY
“As you may have guessed this is a cover of their self-titled song. It’s one that we’ve played live from time to time but never really thought about recording, but we’ve had so many emails and messages from fans asking when we’re going to record it that we thought we should give it a shot. I think it’s really important when you cover a song that you try to make it your own rather than just playing the original, but it’s definitely come out sounding like Five Finger Death Punch.”

WAR IS THE ANSWER
“Obviously this is the title-track, and I think that it’s a really great song to end the album with. War Is The Answer is basically a statement that for better or worse war is something that will never go away, be it on the battlefield or in our own everyday lives, but it’s also a reminder that deep down very few things in life are about flowers and sunshine. There are a lot of people in the world who value their own happiness over the wellbeing of others, and this is basically a massive middle finger to those people.”