Five Finger Death Punch

By Jeannette Madden
Contributing Writer

Fargo will experience the power of Five Finger Death Punch’s “Share The Welt Tour 2011” Tuesday, December 13th at The Venue at The Hub. Death Punch is on tour supporting their newly released third album, American Capitalist, which, according to the band’s newest member bassist Chris Kael, features a “little bit of everything. It’s got the really heavy stuff like ‘American Capitalist’ and ‘Under And Over It’ coming out with that huge stomp, “Kael said, “and then stretching some of Ivan’s vocal chops on songs like ‘Coming Down’. It’s really got something for everyone out there.”

Kael, who joined Five Finger Death Punch in May of this year, was very enthusiastic about his first six months with the band. “Six months ago I was bartending in Vegas and now I’m out doing huge shows with huge production. It’s amazing how life can change.” Kael wasn’t able to participate in the making of American Capitalist other than being in on some of the mixing at the end and instead, the bass on the album was actually played by Kevin Churko (Ozzy Osbourne), who produced the album along with Death Punch’s second album, War Is The Answer. Said Kael, “Great bass player, great engineer. He’s amazing so if there were anybody other than me that could have done bass on that album it’d be that guy.”

Death Punch started when drummer Jeremy Spencer and guitarist Zoltan Bathory met and started writing “Way Of The Fist”. Once the music was done they went in search of singer Ivan Moody, flew him out to Los Angeles for an audition and then cancelled his flight home so he had no choice but to join, or at least that’s how Kael explained it. From there, the band had several line-up changes and now includes guitarist Jason Hook but has settled in and American Capitalist looks to be their most intricate and infectious sound yet.

Kael talked about the evolution from “Way of the Fist” to “American Capitalist”. “The biggest thing that has influenced the sound,” he said, “is that initially it started off with Jeremy and Zoltan and at that point it really only had two people writing the album. As things kept going on Jason got involved in the music as well so it became truly a collaborative effort. Everybody coming together with ideas, bouncing things off one another, so as the years progressed it became a very solid writing unit with everybody contributing. So stuff you hear on the first album was just a couple of guys and then fast forward to American Capitalist where you’ve got everybody collaborating and coming up with the signature Punch sound.”

When it comes to the band’s live show, Kael said bigger is better. “The Death Punch guys did some shows with Rammstein over in Europe last year and the idea is when you go to a show we don’t want people coming to our show and be like ‘yeah, it was a good show and I was there’. We want to make it an experience and we put a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money into the production of this show. Ridiculous lights, a lot of moving light…I don’t want to give away too much for those that haven’t seen it yet but literally, once that intro rolls and the first lights hit you you’re like ‘Oh am I in for an experience!’ And that’s exactly what we’re looking for.”

“Metal got to a point where it was really stripped down, just get out there and play hardcore, but coming from the school of thought that we’re from, we’re into big productions. You go to your local pub to check out a band. You come out to a Death Punch show to see a production. We always try to one up ourselves from tour to tour.”

Experience Kael’s excitement about being the newest member of Five Finger Death Punch in the podcast of this interview!

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IF YOU GO:
WHAT: Share the Welt Tour 2011 - Five Finger Death Punch
WHERE: The Venue at The Hub
WHEN: Tues., Dec 13, 6:30 p.m.
TICKETS: $28.50/each at http://tiny.cc/jptix or call 701.205.3182