Three releases and a decade plus into their existence, Fayetteville, USA natives The Fifth believe they’ve now stumbled upon their perfect line-up.
“Sometimes it takes a while to find your winning team,” said frontman and band mainstay Roy Cathey. “Now, we have a young, hungry band who just want to play and aren’t here for drama. It’s pretty refreshing!”
Joining Cathey are guitarist Justin Womble, bassist Jake Tripp and drummer Gary ‘Zeus’ Smith, all of whom have a respected reputation within the States’ mid-Atlantic region.
Their new self-titled EP sees The Fifth return to the melodic hard rock world, delivering a first track and first single in ‘Shake Little Sister’, flowing right into ‘Calm Before the Storm’ featuring lush acoustic guitars and three-part harmonies. ‘Home’ is the band’s unapologetic tribute to the power ballad, while ‘Comin’ To Get Ya’ is a stomping rocker with elements of Audioslave and Alice in Chains-esque harmonies. Closing the record out is ‘Roll the Bones’, an every-man anthem, evoking both classic Van Halen and Whitesnake.
Coming to life in the mid-2000s, playing a more active rock style of music, The Fifth took their regional area to task, filling venues and getting radio time. In 2008 they toured Japan.
“We had long established ourselves as one of the Southeast’s top up & coming hard rock acts but when we got the response we received in Japan we knew we had a band worthy of International attention,” recollected Cathey.
“A company called JustRock that used to book Japanese tours for bands got in touch with us through our local newspaper, The News & Observer. It was really that simple.”
That year also saw the release of their Confessions Of Man album, distributed through EMG/Universal and it brought more attention to the band.
“This was when the band really hit its stride and reached a global audience” continued Cathrey, of that album, since reissued by Exitus Stratagem Records to much critical and public acclaim.
That was in 2019, and the year before saw a new line-up of The Fifth come together; some “fresh blood” injected into the band’s DNA, that has now released their new EP, that is available via the Weapon Records / Vanity Music Group.
