Influenced by Ivan and Zoltan’s brushes with death, AfterLife is 5FDP’s most defiant album yet. They’ve got new music, a new outlook… and their own metaverse?!

WORDS: MÖRAT • PICTURES: TRAVIS SHINN.

Stepping out of a gleaming black electric Porsche, frontman Ivan Moody takes off his sunglasses and replaces them with an eyepatch. It’s a necessity since an accident at Florida’s Welcome To Rockville festival, where an onstage laser nearly blinded him. “My entire right eye went black and they told me I’d singed the back of my retina,” he says. “So, welcome to the new pirate Ivan!”

It’s 100˚F in Las Vegas today – about 37˚ Celsius – with zero humidity: the kind of heat that hits you like you’ve opened an oven door and stuck your face in there. Not that Vegas locals are unaccustomed to such extreme temperatures in the long summer months, but still, as the members of Five Finger Death Punch arrive, they scurry inside the air-conditioned Son Studios to cool off.

Ivan’s appearance leads to some piss-taking and dodgy pirate jokes, but he takes them in good humour. The whole band are in fine spirits today, goofing around for our photoshoot, genuinely happy to be hanging out together. Given the line-up changes and all they’ve been through in recent years, these are not just bandmates but proper mates, ride or die. That said, it’s impossible not to overhear when Ivan pulls the two newest bandmembers – guitarist Andy James and drummer Charlie Engen – aside to inform them that, at some time in the foreseeable future, he’ll be taking a break from 5FDP to work on a solo album.

After our photoshoot, we adjourn to a quiet room, where he explains further…

“Every artist gets to a point where they start growing and seeing things differently,” he says. “In my opinion, this new album – AfterLife – is my and Zoltan’s apex. This is us, no [ex-guitarist Jason] Hook, no [ex-drummer Jeremy] Spencer, no [ex-bassist] Matt Snell, no lawsuits or involvement with the label [they settled a dispute with Prospect Park in 2017], no anything. It’s literally me and Zoltan sitting at the helm with [producer] Kevin Churko, unleashing the hounds. After this, I plan on sitting back, taking a minute and seeing how I feel. There will come a time when I need to be me for a moment.”

It’s no secret that the singer has been through more than his fair share of hell, much of it self-inflicted, due to an inbuilt self-destruct button, which, thankfully, he is far less inclined to hit these days. Arrests, onstage meltdowns, rehab and even death. Today, four years sober, he seems at peace with himself, grateful to have survived.

Zoltan Bathory: kicking up dust

Ivan Moody: looks like a pirate, sober as a judge

“Everyone says I’ve gotten cheesy or weak since I’ve gotten sober, but that’s far from the truth,” he shrugs. “If anything, I’ve got gnarlier, but my anger is projected differently now. It’s not just me going, ‘Fuck you, man!’ That’s for someone who’s really insecure, which I was and still am, to a degree. But I try to do something cool every day. I know that sounds dumb. Yesterday I was in the grocery store and I saw this lady – late 70s, early 80s – pushing her cart, and there were all these people just watching her do it. I ran over to help her, and I think she thought I was gonna steal it, because I don’t look like the nicest human being. But as I was unloading it into her car, I looked over and she was crying. Those are the moments. It’s the selflessness and the understanding.”