Ivan Moody is a popular singer and current vocalist for Five Finger Death Punch. He believes that by loving his job, one can achieve unprecedented success, and a person who has changed about four groups without leaving music can be trusted.
The shortest biography
Ivan Moody was born on January 7, 1980, and the city of Denver became his home. Almost no one knows anything about Ivan’s childhood; all that is known is that he has a brother and sister. The musician has never seen a father, since he grew up in an inferior family. Perhaps this affected his character: the aggressive guy was a rather problematic child, and his mother gave him to an orphanage, and a little later, his brother and sister.
Ivan Moody's height is only 163 cm, most likely, is another evidence of an inferior childhood, but he does not bother him at all, although he probably hides the traces of the Napoleon complex behind excessive bragging.
Groups, in which Ivan sang
Ivan Moody began speaking when he was 16 years old. In 2001, he moved to Los Angeles and joined his first team called Toyz. The following year, the group recorded a demo, but the audience did not appreciate it. A year later, Moody leaves the team and joins Motograter: the group was distinguished by an unusual style of performance - new metal with notes of industrial. The guys used their own self-developed instrument called “motor grater”, which was assembled from ordinary wire and pieces of an electric guitar and had an interesting sound, a cross between drums and a bass guitar. The group very often appeared at concerts, painted with charcoal, faces, and a little later released an album of the same name.
Motograter was gaining popularity and recognition more and more, so the guys were invited to the Ozzfest festival, where they met the already famous groups Korn, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot. After the festival, the musicians announced their vacation, which was so long that in 2006 Ivan Moody had to leave the lineup.
The next project for Ivan was the Ghost-Machine group: John Stevenson was impressed by Moody's vocal skills and invited him to participate in a new special project, then the guys from Motograter switched to them. The new group created two audio albums and launched the Black Blood Records personal label. Despite this, in this lineup, Ivan did not stay long and went over to Five Finger Death Punch, created by bass player Zoltan Bathory, who was previously a member of UPO
Later, Matt Snell became interested in the Bathory project and made him a company, and having met Ivan Moody, Zoltan invited him to a casting in a new group. The guys quickly found a common language and actively began to record their achievements: Bathory himself came up with the name of the group, as he is engaged in martial arts. Five Finger Death Punch translates as "death punch." As part of this team, Ivan recorded as many as six studio albums.
Musical creativity in FFDP
The active holding of concerts contributed to the rapid rise in the group's popularity: the first album was released in 2007. Critics strongly enough condemned their debut project, but a week later the album entered the Billboard Top 200, and Outburn magazine called them “cowboys from the hell of this millennium.” The Bleeding soundtrack entered the top ten and was played on radio stations for eight months, became one of the Highgate Vampire included in the film. Their discs were bought at an incredible speed.
In 2009, the second album was released, which received the title of gold status in the number of copies sold. Almost every year the team released an album and each of them became no less successful than the previous one. To date, singer Ivan Moody is known under the pseudonym Ghost.
Movies featuring Ivan
During the career of the singer, Ivan Moody managed to star in three films: his first film project was the series Down & Dirty in 2007, in which the musician played himself. The next film was Twilight City, the plot of which was the story of vampires: the singer got the role of Incubus, the dissolute demon. The latest masterpiece of Ivan Moody’s acting career was the 2012 Devil Carnival musical. The film tells about how people randomly ended up in hell at a carnival, Moody played the role of an itinerant clown who entertained the audience with tricks and songs. Despite the plot, the picture was surprisingly instructive.
Rumors about leaving the group
In 2017, information appeared in the media that Ivan Moody was leaving the project for personal reasons: the cause was the fight against alcoholism. Difficulties began in 2012, when the vocalist began to appear drunk even at his concerts. Then the group members, having lost many tour managers, ceased to communicate with Ivan, and this threatened him with the deprivation of place in the team. Due to the fact that the performer was addicted to alcohol, he began to show aggression to others, namely to his mother and sister Dykes.
Subsequently, the court even forbade him to approach his relatives. The next victim was Ivan's wife - Holly Smith, she filed for divorce, claiming that he began to take drugs. His adult daughter also claimed indecent behavior and filed a lawsuit.
Ivan Moody denied rumors about his departure from the group, claiming that he had undergone a rehabilitation course in one of the clinics.