It's been almost two years since Five Finger Death Punch's latest full-length F8, but the band are in the studio cooking up new material.
In a new post on his personal Instagram page, frontman Ivan Moody shares a brief snippet of a new track, which is playing over the monitor system at the Hideout Recording Studio in Nevada – with the hashtags: “#feelinjustf9” and “#andhellscomingwithme”.
We'd wager the latter is the name of either the track or forthcoming album, but that remains to be seen.
The new snippet sounds quintessentially Five Finger Death Punch, with a clean electric guitar arpeggio that leads swiftly into a thunderous gain-driven instrumental section.
Once again, the band are working with producer Kevin Churko, who owns the Hideout recording facility. Churko has worked on all of FFDP's albums to date, including their debut, 2007's The Way of the Fist.
The new album will mark the band's first with British shredder Andy James, who joined last year following the departure of longtime guitarist Jason Hook.
In a Guitar World interview earlier this year, founding guitarist Zoltan Bathory detailed the process of recruiting James.
“We kind of knew each other,” he said. “I was always watching Andy's videos because I found them so impressive. I was in the recording studio with Charlie [Engen, drums] one night, and I brought up Andy. Charlie said he'd toured with him...
“So I asked Charlie to reach out to him, just to tell him that I was a fan of his work. Then Andy and I had a few online conversations. I was originally thinking of asking him to join one of the bands I manage.
“I thought he should find a bigger audience, you know? Fast-forward and I'm sending him a text to join Death Punch at Wembley.”
Bathory explained that there were only two days from the moment he asked James to play his first gig with FFDP, and the gig itself.
“The thing is, with a guy like Andy, you hit a certain level of musicianship,” he said. “I knew he could play the material. I watched his videos and listened to his records. I knew he had the skills; I just didn’t know if he could learn the shit in 48 hours.”
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