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
