Five Finger Death Punch are not scraping the bottom of the barrel.


The phrase “scraping the bottom of the creative barrel” gets justifiably tossed around a lot regarding every subsequent Five Finger Death Punch album since American Capitalist, but honestly, even that phrase is generous for what they are now.
The Way of the Fist was an honest-to-goodness groove metal effort full of genuine attitude, and even though the aforementioned phrase makes it seem like they’ve just been recycling that album, that would be much more preferable to what they do these days.
When I hear the “bottom of the barrel” phrase, it’s usually regarding some band who made a bunch of classic albums in their early days who are trying to go back to that style and desperately and futilely recapture that lightning in a bottle that made their earlier work so revered.
But to call what Five Finger Death Punch are doing “creative” is pretty laughable. They’re not trying to redo The Way of the Fist these days, and barely even pretend like they’re trying to either. They are a radio band now, and everything they make is done with money and numbers in mind and clearly little else.
For lack of anything suggesting they haven’t (though I’m sure they’d vehemently attest that they haven’t), they have just sold out.
They’re not creative anymore in the same sense that they were on their debut and sophomore releases. They are one location of a chain restaurant of a record label, just a source of revenue and publicity. And everything they make lately reeks of the strings being pulled by higher-ups.

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