It’s another dry, sweltering morning in Las Vegas, and the guitarist Zoltan Bathory has just left his Gothic castle. Bearded and dressed in black, with a bundle of dreadlocks piled high on his head, he’s now piloting a small boat across a man-made lake filled with tap water, on his way to breakfast at a nearby café.
The newly renovated replica castle is a recent project and perk of Bathory’s 20-year career as guitarist and founder of the multiplatinum heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch. But last year, as the metal act began planning to celebrate those two decades of action, Bathory discovered that their longtime former label, Prospect Park, had quietly sold the masters to the first seven 5FDP albums.
The group, which retained 50% ownership in the masters but not “administrative rights,” was not informed before the sale.
“We were not privy to the deal. It was completely behind curtains. That’s the annoying part of this,” says Bathory. “I wish they had a conversation because we could have done a deal together, or maybe we would have bought it. We didn’t even get an option. We found out from somebody else. Well, wait a minute, what’s going on?”
With that anniversary coming up in 2025, 5FDP adjusted after finding inspiration in the example of pop superstar Taylor Swift, who responded to the sale of her catalog with a hugely successful series of “Taylor’s Version” rerecordings of entire albums. Swift re-created four of her records, each one topping the Billboard Top 200, before she finally bought back the rights to her catalog this year.
Five Finger Death Punch decided to follow that lead, and in January began rerecording the band’s most popular songs. The first batch of new recordings arrived under the title “20 Years of Five Finger Death Punch — Best of Volume 1,” released Friday, to be followed by “Best of Volume 2” later this year.
“When this happened, it came up immediately: ‘Well, this happened to Taylor and what did she do?’” Bathory says of the plan. “She battle-tested it. And she’s a big artist. ‘OK, that’s your move? Now this is our move.’”
It is just the latest chapter in a sometimes turbulent career for the musicians, as the band rose to become one of the most successful hard rock/metal bands of their generation, boasting 12 billion streams, surpassed only by Metallica and AC/DC. During its first decade, 5FDP released four platinum-selling albums in the U.S., beginning with its second release, 2009’s explosive “War Is the Answer.”
The unexpected sale of their masters — to the independent music publisher Spirit Music Group — was perhaps the final round in a frequently contentious relationship with Prospect Park founder Jeff Kwatinetz. In 2016, the label sued Five Finger Death Punch in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging breach of contract over a coming greatest hits package and the recording of a new album.
That lawsuit got ugly, including an accusation in its initial filing that the band was “attempting to cash in before the anticipated downfall of their addicted bandmate,” a blunt reference to singer Ivan L. Moody’s period of self-destruction at the time. The band countersued. The cases were settled out of court the following year.
A request for comment sent to Kwatinetz through his attorney was not returned by press time, but he told Billboard last month that the band’s current management stopped cooperating, so “I sold my half.”
As he settles into the small lakeside café over a glass of organic matcha tea and avocado toast, Bathory expresses little real anger over the suits and the sale, and looks back cheerfully at the band’s long relationship with the label. The guitarist says he actually enjoyed their heated discussions, reflecting not only their conflicts of the moment, but a shared history as the band rose from clubs on the Sunset Strip to stadiums around the world.
“With our former label president, this is probably the funniest relationship. In the past, we were suing each other for various [issues],” Bathory says with a smile. “We get on the phone, and we’re talking about a lawsuit, and he’s like, ‘You guys lost this injunction.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, f— you.’ ‘Oh, f— you!’ We had this back and forth, and then it’s ‘How’s the kids?’ And then we just talk about albums and music and whatnot for like an hour.
“And then, ‘OK, see you in court.’ ‘F— you,’” he adds with a laugh. “It’s a game of life. And I believe in the way of the samurai. The saddest day in the samurai’s life is when your worst opponent dies, because that’s the guy who kept you on your toes.”
Sessions for the new recordings unfolded quickly from 5FDP’s current lineup that also includes baseball bat-wielding singer Moody, longtime bassist Chris Kael, and two newer members, drummer Charlie Engen and lead guitarist Andy James.
The musicians recorded their parts separately, re-creating songs some of them had by now performed live nearly 1,000 times around the world. The resulting tracks are not exact replicas of the originals, but are faithful to their spirit while leaving room for the natural evolution that happens through years of touring.
The result on “Best of Volume 1” is a potent representation of the band’s history, opening with the snarling riffs of “Under and Over It.” The first volume includes 13 rerecordings and three live tracks. When played side-by-side with the originals, the new self-produced songs never sound like tired retreads but are powered by some contemporary fire in the band’s performances.
The first public glimpse in the project was a rerecording of “I Refuse,” a power ballad from 2018, this time as a duet with Maria Brink (of In This Moment), released as a single in May.
Once news of the project, and its inspiration, began to spread, Five Finger Death Punch began to hear from a new constituency: Swifties.
“What’s kind of crazy is that I see Taylor Swift’s fans on our social media and bulletin board going, ‘Yeah!’ That’s the most bizarre thing,” Bathory says of the new voices cheering the band forward. “We are so far away from each other in style. But it seems like it hit a chord. I guess people who don’t necessarily understand or are privy to the music business and how it works still feel like this is not right.”
While the band is also six songs into recording its next album of new material, Bathory says the new best-of recordings are expected to be fully embraced by the band’s famously intense following.
“Our fans are pretty hardcore,” Bathory says. “They’re very engaged, and they know exactly why we did this. So I think, just to support the band, they will switch [their allegiance to the newer versions] anyway. But these recordings are going to live next to each other.”
Founded in 2005, Five Finger Death Punch was the culmination of the rock star dreams of Bathory that began as teen in Hungary, first as a fan of British punk rock, before turning to metal after discovering Iron Maiden (with early singer Paul Di’Anno). He built his own electric guitar to look like one used by the L.A. heavy metal band W.A.S.P., with a skull-and-crossbones painted onto the surface.
Rock music wasn’t played on TV or the radio in the then-communist country, so Bathory and his friends traded cassette tapes of any punk and metal they got their hands on. “Somebody always somehow smuggled in a record, and we would all copy it,” he remembers. “It created this subculture where we didn’t just look at it as music. It was the sound of the rebellion.”
Bathory also dressed the part, drawing attention for his Def Leppard T-shirt with the Union Jack flag, studded leather jackets and belts, and long hair. Kids who adopted that look and spoke in the language of Western hard rock actually risked arrest, he says.
“I’ve been chased around by the cops so many times,” he recalls with a laugh.
By his early 20s, Bathory moved to New York City with his guitar, about $1,000 in his pocket, and no English-speaking skills. While living in low-budget squalor, he slowly taught himself English, first by translating a random copy of the Stephen King novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.” He played with bands that got nowhere, and after six years relocated to Los Angeles, and things started to change.
For a year, he played bass in the L.A. hard rock band U.P.O., which enjoyed some chart success, then formed Five Finger Death Punch, with a name inspired by the 1972 kung fu film “Five Fingers of Death” and Quentin Tarantino’s two “Kill Bill” epics.
Zoltan Bathory, founder and guitarist of the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch, pilots a small boat on the man-made lake outside his Las Vegas house.
(Steve Appleford)
“I knew exactly what I wanted. There was a vision,” says Bathory.
That vision got clearer when he first saw singer Moody performing with the nu metal band Motograter. It was Bathory’s good fortune that Motograter would soon break up. He reached out to Moody in Denver.
“He was special — his performance, his voice. That star quality thing is a real thing,” notes Bathory of the growling, emotional singer. “You could tell he was a rock star, right? I’m like, OK, that’s the guy.”
In their first years as a band, the quintet played more than 200 shows annually. “We played every little stage that exists,” Bathory says.
Sitting beside the guitarist now in the café is Jackie Kajzer, also known as radio DJ Full Metal Jackie, who first spotted the band on MySpace. She soon caught an early set at the Whisky a Go Go and was immediately sold on their sound and potential. She was also a junior manager at the Firm, a leading management company at the time representing Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.
Kajzer urged the company to sign the ominously-named Five Finger Death Punch, and after two showcase performances on the Strip, it did. The metal band was soon added to the side stage of the high-profile 2007 Family Values Tour, followed the next year by the traveling Mayhem Festival, leaving a powerful impression among new fans and fellow artists.
“When you find something that makes you feel something, it makes it worth fighting for,” says Kajzer, who has remained part of the band’s management team ever since, now at 10th Street Entertainment. “I had never felt it before. PS: I’ve never really felt that again, that same early feeling. You believe in it and you want to shake everyone else and make them get it as well.”
Five Finger Death Punch’s recording career began by uploading a few songs at a time — early versions of “Bleeding,” “Salvation,” and “The Way of The Fist” — to MySpace, then an essential platform for new acts, or what Bathory now remembers with a laugh as “the center of the universe.”
“It was extremely hard, but in the beginning we knew we had something because there was this instant interaction,” Bathory says of fan response. “We were all in bands before — many, many bands. We all recognized that, OK, there’s something different here. We didn’t have to convince people. It just started happening and it was growing really fast.”
Zoltan Bathory, stands beneath a Turkish lamp in his Las Vegas house.
(Steve Appleford)
“The ones that make it, they’re here for decade after decade,” he says of the larger metal scene, which enjoys a seemingly eternal audience. “The family [of fans] is extremely loyal and they’re there forever. Once you’re in, you’re in.”
The band’s first album, 2007’s “The Way of the Fist,” was largely recorded in Bathory’s apartment near the Sunset Strip. It reached halfway up the Billboard Top 200 album chart and eventually went gold, with 500,000 copies sold. While even greater success follower, there has also been the usual ups and downs in the life of a metal band, with group members coming and going, troubles with substance abuse, and arguments over creative choices.
After two decades together, the singer and the guitarist have survived.
“It’s still a tornado. It’s a band, a bunch of guys, so I don’t think it’s ever going to change. We built this freaking thing like it was a battleship,” says Bathory with a grin, sitting in the castle beneath an ornate Turkish lamp.
“It’s always going to be that we fight and argue, but at the end of the day, we always figure things out. We always climb the next mountain.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
