During a recent appearance on Sweet Potato Pod With Todd Royce, Five Finger Death Punch bassist Chris Kael recalled how James Hetfield once surprised him.
The band has been currently touring with Metallica. Kael initially talked about how it goes so far:
“I am a huge Metallica fan. We are out on tour with Metallica, doing shows with them and then doing dates in between those shows. But I’ve had the chance to interact with the guys from Metallica. And people will say, ‘Don’t meet your heroes.’ F*ck that. Metallica is awesome. Those dudes are great.”
Then, Kael reflected on Hetfield’s attitude towards him when they encountered:
“There was one day I was in catering with my tech, and [Metallica frontman] James Hetfield walked in. He was on his phone talking to somebody. And I see him put [the phone] down. He goes, ‘Hold on a second.’ He said, ‘Hey, Kael. You doing good? Having a good time? Is there anything that you need?’ All that other stuff. And then he’s, like, ‘Okay, I’ll talk to you in a minute.’ He got back on his phone. I looked at my tech. I was, like, ‘Did James Hetfield just get off the phone to say hi to me?’”
Zoltan Bathory’s Comments On Touring With Metallica
In August 2023, Five Finger Death Punch opened first time for Metallica on the M72 tour at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. In April, the band’s guitarist Zoltan Bathory talked to Audacy Check In about touring with Metallica in 2023 and 2024. He said:
“That’s great. Eighty, ninety thousand people in a stadium, that’s massive. And it’s one of those things where, obviously, we have a big fanbase that overlaps. So, Metallica is such a huge band; they had four decades to gain that fanbase, so you’re gonna have three generations of people in there. And it’s such a big band now that — and in some ways, they’re growing, believe it or not, Metallica, still; it’s crazy. And so it’s such a big band that even if you’re not necessarily into metal, you’ve gotta come; you have to come and see.”
Five Finger Death Punch was set to support Metallica on European shows in spring 2023 but canceled them so singer Ivan Moody could fully recover from hernia surgery. The group’s next show with Metallica is on August 4 in Foxborough.