FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH Guitarist: 'We Like To Pick Titles That Are Slightly Risky'

Robert Gray of Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH guitarist Jason Hook. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Could you provide some background information on writing and recording "American Capitalist"?

Hook: We jumped in right away. When we finished up the touring cycle for "War Is The Answer", we all agreed that it would be better to push ourselves and dive right back in and go to work on another record rather than continue to tour on "War Is The Answer" for 2011. I think that the public in this day and age are anxious to consume all the time. We all live in an era of consumption, and the faster, quicker and more frequent things can come, the better. Having said that, we decided to go right back in and write another record. Even though it may seem premature, we'd rather push ourselves and shorten the gap between releases. We took a week off, and then we started writing. It was just basically everybody at their home studios cramming ideas on their systems, just getting together a couple of times a week, comparing notes, and sending the music back and forth. When we finally had a handful of tracks, we'd go and record them with our producer, Kevin [Churko], who's also in Las Vegas.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Were you fully involved in making "War Is The Answer", or did you join FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH midway through the process? You joined the band in 2009, I believe.

Hook: I co-wrote that record. From day one I was working on that record, and was very fortunate to have come into the band when I came into the band because I very much had my heart set on applying my creative input and my engineering and recording skills into the project. I was fortunate to be able to join just at the beginning of that record. We did a couple of months of touring in Europe, but then the first thing on the agenda was to come back and start working on a new record. I was really anxious to get started on that, so yeah, I was there for the entire record.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What is your take on the album's title? "American Capitalist"?

Hook: First of all, we like to pick titles that are slightly risky. We don't like things that are safe, and we don't like things that are risk-free. The title of "War Is The Answer" made everyone perk up and scratch their heads, and think "What are these guys trying to say? War is the answer?" That's an awesome, bold thing to say. "Why did they decide to say that?" Everybody has a different definition of a capitalist. The word "capitalist" is taken from capitalizing things. People that are capitalists are and this is for your reading audience people that take advantage of opportunities, opportunists. They work hard to make sure that they can extract the most out of their given situation. Successful people, driven people, motivated people, competitive people. When we use the phrase "American capitalist," it really explains who we are and what our personalities are. We don't just like to fuck around; we wanna divide and conquer every step of the way, because we want success and we don't really hide that. We wear that on our sleeves, and anybody who's interested in that type of mentality, or anyone who's interested in pushing themselves a little harder, we'd suggest for them to come onboard. When you fight for something and you get it, it's really the best feeling out there and that's capitalizing on a given situation. That's why we called the album "American Capitalist", because we want everyone to realize that success isn't a negative thing. Success is a positive thing. I hope that I have fuckloads of money, and then I can have fuckloads of freedom and options and security, and all the things that we all want. American capitalists.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Do you feel that it comes with the territory? When bands who play this type of music achieve gold records, there always seems to be a backlash from certain quarters.

Hook: Yeah, sure. We're all living through it for the first time; we just got two gold records for the first two records that we released, and so obviously something's working. We don't look at that as an opportunity to get soft or lazy, but look at it like those records should've been platinum and we mustn't have worked hard enough (laughs). We look at it like, "Nice, we've got a couple of gold records. But the best is yet to come." I don't mean to sound clichd, but our best effort is still yet to be released. Those records were recorded and done years ago we basically put them in our back pocket, and we're not even thinking about those records. The fact that they actually went gold is like "Oh, they went gold? Cool, but wait 'till we get the new stuff done."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Since you've toured the world with FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH now, is there a synergy on "American Capitalist" that wasn't there as much on "War Is The Answer"?

Hook: I don't know. It felt very familiar to me. I think that one of the things that helped was Ivan [Moody], our singer, was living in Denver during the last record, and I was living in Los Angeles. We had to travel into Las Vegas, but right now we've all moved to Las Vegas. I just bought a new house, Ivan just bought a new house. We all live within five to ten minutes of each other, so it actually makes it easier to come together to work and also have some sort of peaceful separation at the end of the work day or at the end of the work week. We can be at our houses and enjoy our pool and relax, whereas during "War Is The Answer" we were all living together at the studio. We didn't get those on and off type releases that sometimes are needed during recording.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What's working with Kevin Churko like?

Hook: Kevin Churko is really the industry's best-kept secret, in my opinion. He's an amazingly talented guy. He's one of these guys who has a very calm personality and a very good work ethic; he's a hard worker, likes to put in long days, never complains and never gets emotional. Yet he's always focused on the goal of completing something to the best of his ability. I've worked with producers where it's obvious that they're focused on getting paid, and the end result of the product is secondary. Kevin cares about what he's doing and he's got an extremely well-developed shit meter, so he pushes us to do our best even more than we do ourselves, which is why he sits in with us so well. He's also a multi-talented guy who plays guitar, plays bass, plays piano, everything. He's just one of those guys who really adds those different flavors when you're not around, so it's really nice to have. Somebody who can add to what we're doing already.

Read the entire interview from Ultimate-Guitar.com.