It's official. Five Finger Death Punch have confirmed their new full-time drummer. After initally announcing that previous drummer Jeremy Spencer would be sitting out a tour, and then eventually forced to quit due to medical issues, the band enlisted Scale The Summit drummer Charlie "The Engine" Engen to fill in tremporarily.
His temporary fill in days are over as FFDP made the official announcement in a recent studio diary.
Engen is now officially a member of the band. Here is our video report on the announcement:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5L8kO4st8o][/youtube]
During the tour diary, guitarist Jason Hook explained how Engen came to join the band:
"It was actually Jeremy that found Charlie," Jason said. "Jeremy had reached out to [him] through Instagram."
"Yeah, we had been just drum buddies for a while, talking drums and classic stuff, so we developed a relationship that way," Charlie confirmed. "And that was a year and a half before all this."
Jason continued: "And so when Jeremy told us that he was thinking about hanging it up — he had gone through a couple of different surgeries and really thought that he wasn't gonna be able to play drums up to his standards — we understood. 'But the good news is I found the guy.' He said, 'Well, it's this fellow on Instagram named Charlie.' I immediately went and started checking out the videos online, and I was, like, 'Holy fuck! This guy's a beast!' And I think I reached out to [him]."
"Yeah, we talked for a little bit before, leading up to everything," Charlie said.
[youtube=https://youtu.be/RZ_hl2bm6s0][/youtube]
Five Finger Death Punch is already in the studio working on new material. The band is working with Kevin Churko at the Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, NV. They have been putting out behind the scenes clips and in a recent clip, guitarist Zoltan Bathory was discussing the sound of the new album:
“So far, this record is gonna be… holy shit. It’s nasty. Some nasty riffs. The vocals are great—kind of like ‘War Is The Answer‘ and ‘The Way Of The Fist‘ a little bit. For some reason the music is shifting back to that heavier side. And, man, I’m really, really curious to see how it’s going to turn out, because… wow! I’m very happy with what’s happening.”
Watch the band's previous studio diaries here.
