The title track of the album is entirely about how being a capitalist is a good thing and the “American” thing to do, while “If I Fall” matches that message by saying that those who fail or lose should ensure that everyone else suffers in the same way. Although less than half of the album experiences lyrical problems, the songs that suffer are bad enough that they drown out the positives of the rest of the album. That reminder is desperately needed, too, because most of the rest of the album is a confusing, unfortunate mess, and almost all of it has to do with the lyrical content. Additionally, there are a good number of other songs, like “Generation Dead”, “Back for More” and “Wicked Ways”, that are akin to the first two albums and will remind listeners that this is still the same band. The requisite softer tracks on the album, “Coming Down” and “Remember Everything”, are among the best pseudo-ballads the band has written, while “Menace” is easily the heaviest, most aggressive song of the group’s career. Ivan Moody’s raw vocal prowess still makes him one of the most distinct voices in metal. The metalcore-groove fusion is just as strong as on their earlier material, with the same precision guitar work and drumming. In the interest of fairness, the positives of American Capitalist are consistent with what is expected of Five Finger Death Punch. But the things that are wrong with American Capitalist are so glaringly obvious that they’re hard to ignore and harder still to forget.
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The album isn’t wholly bad – in fact, there are plenty of good things to say about it. Saying it’s not on par isn’t even an accurate description, though. How unfortunate, though, that the third album, American Capitalist, is not on par with the group’s previous work. It was only logical to believe, therefore, that Five Finger Death Punch’s third album would be just as popular and do similarly well. War Is the Answer was cemented on the Billboard 200 for 92 weeks following its debut at #7, which is a nearly impossible feat for a metal band in the era of downloaded music. As the group’s album sales went through the roof, the face and voice of metal invaded the tranquility of pop culture America and refused to leave. The group’s first two albums, The Way of the Fist and War Is the Answer, were chock-full of meaty riffs, wild guitar solos, guttural screaming vocals, and emotionally-charged lyrics about individualism, rage and darkness. In many ways, their outward appearance personifies every stereotype that pop culture makes about the modern-day metal listener, just as much as their music matches the preconceptions made about metal by most non-metal listeners. There is a very important reason why Five Finger Death Punch has essentially become the face of metal in America.