But they’re able to sell 114,000 albums in a week, which means they’re reaching an audience your average blog-friendly metal band can’t even dream of. Critics pretty much hate them (a reaction that’s likely to get worse, now that guitarist Zoltan Bathory has endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on Twitter) metal elitists sneer at them and consider them knuckle-dragging, lowest-common-denominator purveyors of post-Pantera crap. Freeman frames the issue as such:įive Finger Death Punch are probably the least cool metal band around right now. Still, the matter of Five Finger Death Punch’s popularity is not without its complications, as explored in a 2015 Stereogum article titled “How Five Finger Death Punch Got Huge By Writing Songs for Soldiers”by Phil Freeman. It’s also hard to gainsay the band’s concentrated commitment to helping struggling veterans, as reflected in their organization 5FDP4VETS. The video for “Wrong Side of Heaven” has been viewed 230 million times, people, and the YouTube comments ooze with testimonials from vets who find much to appreciate in Five Finger Death Punch’s music and messages.
The numbers, however, suggest that Five Finger Death Punch has captured the true, beating heart of what many soldiers really like when it comes to seeing their lives reflected in art, and what hundreds of thousands of non-veterans (to include the members of Five Finger Death Punch) think it means to thank veterans for their service. I suppose you could love Five Finger Death Punch, but have reservations about their exploitation of military motifs, and I suppose you could whole-heartedly “support the troops” while hating on Five Finger Death Punch.
If you love metal, Five Finger Death Punch’s mil-and-war songs and videos probably strike you as moving, sincere, and laudable. If you find metal cartoonish at best and unlistenable the rest of the time, you probably won’t be very impressed by Five Finger Death Punch’s musical efforts to give voice to the concerns of soldiers and veterans. How you feel about the American metal band Five Finger Death Punch’s extensive use of military terminology, imagery, themes, characters, and narratives in their songs and videos probably has a lot to do with how you feel about metal generally.
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