Yesterday, the news about Five Finger Death Punch frontman Ivan Moody’s domestic violence accusations from a woman who claimed to be his wife, Holly Smith, broke all over the internet. According to the original report by TMZ, Smith filed for divorce after Moody put her in a choke hold at a hotel in Las Vegas. Then guitarist Zoltan Bathory denied the accusations stating that Moody wasn’t even married. The PRP has unearthed two year-old tweets from a Holly Smith claiming that he was her boyfriend, so if they did indeed get married, it happened within the past few years. Given that they both live in Las Vegas, that’s not impossible, but still. This morning, the drama continued, as TMZ claimed that Moody’s family has several restraining orders against him due to his violent behavior when he drinks or does drugs. According to this report, Moody’s younger sister, Sandra Dykes, got a restraining order against him last September after he threatened her and their mom for stealing his money. Let’s take a step back and look at this situation from a different perspective. A few months ago, the band apparently broke up on stage after a collective meltdown during a performance in Memphis and the news broke everywhere. After clearing up that the band wasn’t going anywhere, they also took the chance to tease a new track from their upcoming album Got Your Six and everyone knew about it as they were in the middle of the media storm. This time, after the claims from TMZ and Zoltan’s tweet regarding the whole ordeal, we also get this:
Today’s preview is … The song “QUESTION EVERYTHING” – from the new record “Got Your Six” out on… https://t.co/OEI6IQ8WEH — Zoltan Bathory (@ZoltanBathory) August 13, 2015
I don’t know about you, but I do see some sort of trend happening here that every time there is a controversial event with the band, they happen to have some new music to capitalize on the situation. It could be that they’re very well aware that any press is good press and are taking the chance to promote themselves around these events, but if they’re using the angle that their frontman is a trainwreck to promote the new album, it’s probably the worst possible way to promote an upcoming release. Also, apparently TMZ is the only one getting their hands on those “documents” which, even after Zoltan debunked their story, TMZ didn’t acknowledge.
We will see what new response we get from the band this time as soon as we get one.
