"FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH" A Parent's Perspective (Show Review)

10 hours ago
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Five Finger Death Punch brought 20 years of bruising hard rock and heavy metal to Pittsburgh, but their anniversary tour proved there is more than one way to make a crowd feel loud.

The band’s 2026 North American run celebrates two decades of Five Finger Death Punch, a career built on arena-sized riffs, massive choruses and an audience that has followed them from clubs to amphitheaters. Rather than surrounding themselves with bands that sounded exactly like them, though, Five Finger Death Punch brought along Detroit hard-rockers Eva Under Fire and outlaw-country heavyweight Cody Jinks, creating one of the more interesting touring bills of the summer.

On paper, jumping from Eva Under Fire’s modern rock to Cody Jinks’ whiskey-soaked country before Five Finger Death Punch takes the stage sounds like somebody put three different playlists on shuffle. In person, it makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Rock, metal and outlaw country have always shared some of the same DNA: rebellion, attitude, heavy stories and fans who are not particularly interested in being told what they are supposed to listen to. Looking around The Pavilion at Star Lake, cowboy hats mixed with black band shirts, boots stood next to battle vests, and the same crowd that sang along with Jinks was more than ready to throw horns in the air when Five Finger Death Punch arrived, apparently, the kids call that “y’allternative” these days. Whatever the label, it turns out the distance between outlaw country and heavy metal is mostly just a few decibels and maybe one less pedal-steel guitar.

Sometimes a concert bill makes perfect sense the second you see the lineup.

Other times, you need to actually stand in the crowd before it clicks. Five Finger Death Punch rolled into The Pavilion at Star Lake outside Pittsburgh on August 7 as part of the North American leg kicking off the band’s 20th Anniversary World Tour, bringing outlaw-country heavyweight Cody Jinks and Detroit rockers Eva Under Fire along for the ride.

Eva Under Fire had the job every first band on a three-act amphitheater bill gets handed, walk onto a stage while thousands of people are still parking, buying beer, finding seats, and figuring out where the hell their friends wandered off to and make them pay attention. Mission accomplished. I’d caught Eva Under Fire in Pittsburgh a few years back, if memory serves, on a bill with Nothing More, and they were killer then, and a few years later, that hasn’t changed much, if anything, they’ve gotten sharper and more polished.

“Villainous” was especially timely; the track comes from the band’s newly released 2026 album of the same name, which arrived earlier this summer. Eva Under Fire have an ability that's been tailored with years of playing live, where you don’t feel like you’re watching somebody simply occupy the stage until the “real” show begins; they make you feel like they're the headliners opening.

After. abrief intermission, Cody Jinks came on, and let me tell you, Cody Jinks was the curveball, a beautiful, bald, whiskey-soaked, unapologetically outlaw-country curveball. Following a modern hard-rock band with straight-up country before one of the biggest American metal bands of the last two decades sounds like a wild booking decision until Jinks and his band actually start playing. Not to mention Cody Jinks himself wore an Eva Under Fire shirt and gave a HUGE shoutout to the band during their set.

His set was outlaw country to the fucking bone, and personally, I heavily fuck with that. I spent time playing in a bluegrass band myself, so there’s something about hearing real string-driven, roots-heavy music delivered with an attitude that immediately hits a different part of my brain. You can hear when somebody is playing country music because it’s a genre, and you can hear when somebody sounds like they’ve actually lived inside that music.

Jinks falls firmly into the latter category.

His 12-song Star Lake set moved through “Fast Hand,” “David,” “Ain’t a Train,” “I Can’t Complain,” “Mamma Song,” “Heavy Load,” “Must Be the Whiskey,” “Hippies and Cowboys” and more before closing with the appropriately titled “Loud & Heavy.” He also worked in Ward Davis’ “Found” and, perhaps most fittingly for this particular crowd, AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll).” That AC/DC cover felt almost like the handshake between the two halves of the evening, because the more Jinks played, the less strange this lineup became. the attitude was the connection. Outlaw country and heavy metal have always shared more common ground than genre gatekeepers like to admit, (Skynard, Pantera, Job For A Cowboy), both work best when there’s some danger around the edges, and both have audiences that value authenticity almost obsessively.

Another short intermission and 5FDP took the stage at 9 p.m, and spent the next hour and a half demonstrating something that can occasionally get lost when talking about a band with a catalog this big, these guys know how to put on a fucking show. Their current tour marks 20 years of Five Finger Death Punch, and the band entered Pittsburgh fresh off the July 31 digital release of Legacy, their tenth studio album. Naturally, the night wasn’t built entirely around nostalgia.

They opened with “Welcome to the Circus” before immediately dropping new material “Eye of the Storm” and “Legacy,” then went straight into “Wash It All Away,” “Jekyll and Hyde” and “Lift Me Up.”

That opening stretch told you basically everything you needed to know. The production was massive, the band sounded tight, and the entire thing was engineered for an amphitheater full of people who did not come to politely observe a concert. Throughout the night, band members were constantly throwing things into the audience, guitar picks flew into the crowd, drumsticks followed, and even pieces of jewelry made their way from the stage into the hands of fans. At one point, frontman Ivan Moody threw his fucking cane into the crowd.

There’s a difference between acknowledging an audience and actively feeding off one, and Five Finger Death Punch spent the entire night doing the latter. They understand that for the person standing 30 rows back, catching a guitar pick or getting pointed at from the stage might become the thing they remember about that concert years later, so they create those moments constantly. The band kept piling on the familiar material with their massive cover of “Bad Company,” followed by “De Oppresso Liber,” “Burn It Down” and a drum solo before a snippet of “Burn MF.”

“Remember Everything” and “Wrong Side of Heaven” provided some of the night’s biggest emotional moments, reminding everybody that beneath the aggression and arena-sized riffs, Five Finger Death Punch have built a substantial part of their career around songs dealing with regret, pain, isolation, service, family and trying to make sense of the shit life throws at you.

That emotional connection is a major piece of why their audience is so intensely loyal.

Then came “IOU,” followed by one of the stranger and more entertaining moments of the set: a rapid-fire medley running through Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell,” Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Metallica to Papa Roach to Bon Jovi in the span of a few minutes? Sure. Why the hell not?

“Trouble” and “Never Enough” closed the main portion of the set before the band returned for a three-song encore of “Under and Over It,” “Sham Pain” and, finally, “The Bleeding.”

Ending with “The Bleeding” felt right.

Twenty years into a career, you could easily build an anniversary tour entirely around nostalgia, collect the check and go home.

With songs from Legacy sitting comfortably beside material spanning the band’s catalog, Five Finger Death Punch came across less like a group looking backward at 20 years and more like one taking inventory before moving into whatever comes next.

Somewhere during all of this, there was also a slightly more personal development.

Apparently my giant head ended up on the Star Lake video screens.

I say “apparently” because I had absolutely no idea it happened.

Someone told me after the show, and then another person sent me video evidence.

So while I was busy working the show, my face apparently got its own brief Five Finger Death Punch supporting slot. Naturally, the video has since made its way onto the socials.

[LINK TO BIG-SCREEN VIDEO / SOCIAL POST HERE]

There are worse ways to find out you made the jumbotron.

(Just ask that CEO from the Coldplay show)

Then Five Finger Death Punch took over Star Lake and delivered exactly what an anniversary-sized headlining performance should feel like: loud, polished, interactive, emotional and completely aware that the people standing on the other side of the barricade are just as important to the show as the people onstage.

Twenty years in, that ability to command an audience hasn’t gone anywhere, and it seems like neither is Five Finger Death Punch anytime soon.

You can check out the photo gallery, and more below!

PHOTO GALLERY