Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Zoltan Bathory has opened up about how Ivan Moody came to join the band. He shared the story behind what he jokingly calls a “kidnapping” in a recent interview.
Bathory explained how he was immediately certain Moody was the right fit for the band after seeing him perform. He described how a simple audition turned into a full recording session that kept Moody in Los Angeles for nearly a month.
“We flew him to L.A. in 2006. He lived in Denver at the time, I flew him into town and came to the audition. He had a couple of songs that he wrote the lyrics for already,” Bathory said. “At this time, I already had the band, so I recruited all the band members. I was certain that he was the voice, because I saw him before, I saw him perform with his old band. I was 100-percent, this is the guy that has the right attitude, can sing, can scream, amazing performer, has the crowd. There’s so many elements for someone to be a great performer.”
Bathory went on to describe how he kept the momentum going once Moody arrived. He even went as far as canceling Moody’s return flight to keep the sessions rolling.
“So I definitely was focused on him like, this is the guy … He came to L.A., we canceled his plane to get out. First day, we were just looking at this, like, holy shit, he’s the guy. Now everybody understood what I was talking about. And then I was like, ‘Hey, you sound great, let’s go to the studio and grab this song just so we can hear how it sounds recorded,'” he continued. “So we went in the studio, recorded the vocals. ‘Now let’s record a lighter song, like ‘The Bleeding.’ We recorded that. ‘Okay, let’s get a heavy song,’ we get a heavy song. Now we have three songs, right? ‘You know what? I have this mid-tempo thing. Let’s do that.'”
What started as a single audition quickly snowballed into the recording of an entire album, much to Moody’s surprise.
“Eventually he goes, ‘Bro, we are like seven songs in now.’ I’m like, ‘What? Three more and we have a record.’ He’s like, ‘Dude, I have one suitcase, I’ve got to go home.’ He was in nearly a month now,” Bathory added.
The story sheds light on the unconventional beginnings of one of rock’s most successful lineups. Moody ultimately stayed on to become the frontman of Five Finger Death Punch.
The band’s origins stretch back to 2005, when Bathory founded Five Finger Death Punch in Las Vegas. A former Hungarian soldier who had fled communism to build a new life in the United States, Bathory drew the band’s name from his love of classic kung fu cinema. It was a detail that reflected the deliberate, larger-than-life identity he was crafting from the very start.
Before Moody ever set foot in a Los Angeles studio, he had already built a reputation as a commanding frontman. He had served as the lead vocalist for nu-metal act Motograter and contributed to their 2003 self-titled debut album. Moody departed the band in 2005, just as Bathory was assembling what would become Five Finger Death Punch. It was Moody’s raw stage presence and vocal range from those years that had caught Bathory’s attention long before the audition took place.
Bathory’s recruitment process was methodical and personal. He had already brought in drummer Jeremy Spencer after Spencer responded to an ad Bathory had posted. Spencer played a key role in helping assemble the rest of the lineup, including bassist Matt Snell, before Moody was brought in as the final and most critical piece.
The sessions from Moody’s extended stay in Los Angeles became the foundation of Five Finger Death Punch’s debut album, The Way of the Fist, released on July 31, 2007. The record was produced by Nick Raskulinecz, known for his work with Foo Fighters and Alice in Chains. It featured the single “The Bleeding” — one of the very songs recorded during those early marathon sessions Bathory described. The album debuted on the Billboard 200 and was later certified gold after surpassing 500,000 copies sold. It marked the beginning of one of heavy metal’s most commercially successful runs of the 2000s.
Source: Loudwire
