Five Finger Death Punch celebrate their 20th anniversary this year with new album Legacy. But as guitarist Zoltan Bathory admits, the band would never have reached this milestone if singer Ivan Moody had continued the self-destructive behaviour that very nearly killed him.
Bathory tells MusicRadar: “I’m so proud of the history of this band. 20 years of getting bigger and bigger, with millions of fans all over the world. And what’s crazy is it’s still getting bigger. We’re not done.
“But we’ve had to work really hard for this. Hard rock and metal is not the centre of the universe like it used to be. So for every territory, you have to work hard. You can be huge in America but no one knows you in England, no one knows you in Germany.
“For us there was never a one big global explosion. We did this territory by territory. And there’s a lifestyle that goes with that, and it’s not always healthy.”
The founder and leading figure in Five Finger Death Punch, Bathory clarifies: “I’m the sober one, right? I was the one at the steering wheel, dealing with the business and keeping it on the rails as much as possible. But there came moments when we could no longer hide what was going on in this band, and then you start to have the meltdowns.
“Everybody looked at Ivan. They said that he was the culprit, because he’s the singer, so when he falls down on stage and couldn’t continue a show, or he was so drunk that he could just barely be able to walk out on stage, that’s what everybody sees.
“People don’t realise that the rest of the guys in the band were just as bad. It wasn’t just Ivan, but because he’s the singer everybody focused on him.”
Bathory sighs and and shakes his head at the memory.
“All of them were out of control,” he says. “At every show we played they were doubling the security. They knew that this is going to be crazy, right?
“So there were moments when I’m like, ‘This is a lot to deal with.’ You have to be the psychologist, you have to be the general, and sometimes the dictator.”
Bathory says that Moody tried to get sober on various occasions, without success.
“He went to rehab several times, and he went back to the party life. When you’re on the road, when that’s your life, it’s very difficult to stay away from that stuff. Every day somebody will be like, ‘Hey, let’s party!’ They don’t realise we were in another town yesterday and another one before. They don’t really see that. Most people would say, ‘I can’t do this for ten days in a row’ – let alone two years in a row or twenty years in a row.”
Bathory says it was tough love from himself and a number of other metal musicians that eventually got through to Moody in 2017.
“Ivan and me, we’re like brothers,” he says. “There were times when we wanted to kill each other, but he’s like my little brother, right? And it got so bad with him that I was watching him and thinking like, ‘Man, he’s gonna die on my watch – and that can’t happen.’”
He pauses and adds: “I think he actually did die for a few moments. He flatlined. So I had to do something drastic.
“I thought, he’s a singer, he’s a performer, that’s what he's good at, that’s what he can’t live without. That’s what he loves and who he is. And the only threat I could make to him is that I’m gonna take this away from him.
“That was the hardest thing, because you know it was a bluff in some way. I wanted it to be a bluff, course. But if I don’t do something then you’re gonna die, because it’s getting to the point where you’re going to.”
Among the fellow musicians who supported Moody in this time were Pantera singer Phil Anselmo and the members of Korn.
At the point when Moody’s intervention was staged, Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington was instrumental in making it happen.
Bathory recalls: “In that moment, when Ivan got really serious about getting sober, the support that we got from other musicians was unbelievable. The first person to step up was Chester Bennington. We were on tour with Linkin Park in South America and Chester got hold of Ivan and told him, ‘Bro, you’re going to rehab – like right now. Get it together. You can do it. I did it. You can do it.’”
Bathory says that he warned Moody: “If you don’t stay in that rehab facility for 30 days, you’re out of the band.”
The tough love worked.
“Ivan got sober,” Bathory says, “and that changed everything.”
