Band seeks to unite metal scene

No one could find the dude. The tour was set to start in days. This was a problem.

Zoltan Bathory, guitarist for hard-hitting Vegas transplants Five Finger Death Punch, got caught up in a heavy metal version of "The Hangover" recently.

It began with shots of tequila at the band's CD release show for their sophomore CD, "War Is The Answer," at Wasted Space a few Fridays ago.

It ended with his bandmates unable to locate him for a few days, which created a minifuror online, with the group publicly soliciting Bathory's whereabouts and speculation running rampant about what happened to the guy.

But soon enough, Bathory would resurface, somewhat baffled by the brouhaha.

"It just got out of hand a little bit," Bathory says after the fact, noting that he lost one of his cell phones in a pool somewhere. "This is full on proof that we are victims of technology. Today, if you don't text somebody back in an hour it's like, 'Hey, what's going on, dude? Are you mad at me?' If you don't text back in six hours, then people are worried. How this becomes news, it spills into the regular media and the whole thing starts to get really stupid."

Bathory is especially bemused by the whole affair because, for the most part, he's the teetotaler in the band.

"I don't drink much, which is why this whole thing kind of got out of hand," he says through a Hungarian accent. "I'm the responsible guy in the band. I'm the guy who kind of runs the band business, answers to management."

With that, Bathory is ready to change the subject.

And for good reason. His band has become one of the top breakout successes in the metal ranks in recent years, selling more than 335,000 copies of its self-financed 2007 debut, "The Way of the Fist." Though the group originated in Los Angeles, three of the five band members now live here, and Bathory considers FFDP a de facto Vegas band these days.

The group recorded the gruffly melodic "War Is The Answer" here with producer Kevin Churko, another former Los Angeles denizen who has relocated to Vegas, and the album, which was released last Tuesday, was on pace to sell about 40,000 copies in its debut week as of press time.

This kind of success is especially sweet for Bathory, who hails from a country where even procuring an instrument can be a real challenge.

"When I was a kid, if you wanted to just get a guitar, it was like an impossible task. It was a Communist country, so to buy a guitar, it was almost like, 'You're never going to get a good one,' " Bathory recalls of trying to embark on a career in music when he was younger. "People were telling me my whole life, 'Forget it, it's never going to happen.' "

But it did happen. And now that Bathory and Co. are here, they want everybody to know about it.

"That's the spirit that we're always trying to achieve, we want to unite the scene, unite heavy metal," Bathory says, sounding like a true believer. "We will carry the flag for Las Vegas metal."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.