CONCERT REVIEW: Five Finger Death Punch Bring The Pyro To Rotterdam

It has been a while since we saw Five Finger Death Punch live, but as they say: distance makes the heart grow fonder. In our experience, a FFDP show is always eventful. We’ve had a bit of a turbulent past with the band. We were at the infamous Tilburg show for example where the band walked off halfway through the set, after we interviewed the drummer who’s now off doing different things in life. It would suffice to say that now, Five Finger Death Punch are stronger than ever. With a brand new album on its way, the band are playing arenas and huge festivals all across Europe, and luckily they brought their pyro-filled set to the brand new RTM stage in Rotterdam as well.

For tonight’s show, Five Finger Death Punch brought along the iconic Megadeth, fronted by just as iconic Dave Mustaine, who played an extensive set of an hour for a support act, which made all the sense in the world. Many fans in the audience were reppin’ Megadeth merch, so there were definitely a couple of people in the audience who came out tonight to see Megadeth perform, and lucky for them, their set lasted a full hour. Relying more on their instruments rather than vocals, Megadeth came to deliver a thrash-metal masterclass, showing why they’re part of the ‘big 4’ of the Thrash Metal genre together with Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica. Even with the extensive support slot, an hour wasn’t enough. Please come back soon with a headline show.

Kicking off proceedings with the 2020 single Inside Out, Five Finger Death Punch set the tone for the rest of the evening. The exceedingly huge amounts of pyro started during the first song and wouldn’t die down until the very end and the band members were clearly having a great time up on that stage. 3 songs in, frontman Ivan Moody went for his first costume change, something he would end up doing a couple of times throughout the set to switch things up. FFDP didn’t particularly rush through their sets, but instead made a lot of small talk with the audience in-between songs, often times being really funny while doing so.

The setlist was a very nice mixture of old and new, but the new singles were suspiciously absent. We were very excited to hear the band’s most recent single Welcome To The Circus, and according to Setlist.fm, this song has been played a few times over the last couple of weeks at festival and arena shows, but unfortunately: we came up short. Luckily, the discography of FFDP is extensive enough to have something on there for everyone. All the way from The Way Of The Fist, with the fan-favourite The Bleeding up until the 2020 album F8, which features the unmissable A Little Bit Off and the aforementioned Inside Out. Of course, the very popular cover Bad Company could not be left out on this fine night, either. Five Finger Death Punch had something fun planned for almost every song, from pyro to confetti, an outfit swap or inviting fans up on stage. We aren’t quite sure whether this was fun and games but frontman Ivan Moody shared with the fans that he broke his finger on stage tonight, but I’m sure the coming days will tell.

It feels like bands are just coming back stronger than ever after a very frustrating COVID period of 2 years. Just like A Day To Remember absolutely blew our minds not even a week ago, Five Finger Death Punch did the exact same tonight. Perhaps we are just ecstatic to be at shows again, or perhaps bands are just very happy they’re able to play shows again. Maybe a little bit of both? Anyway, everything fell into place tonight and we cannot wait for the band to come back to play some of their new songs from the upcoming album AfterLife, which will release on the 19th of August via Better Noise Music.

Check out the photos by Eva van den Bosch in the gallery right below.