Five Finger Death Punch bassist Chris Kael says he goes to therapy, and argues Phil Labonte was doing therapy during his own interview.
Chris Kael has spent the past two years telling audiences he is a recovering addict who works through his problems out loud. So when All That Remains frontman Phil Labonte declared that therapy is for women and men fix themselves through action, the Five Finger Death Punch bassist had a position ready.
He shared his take on the newest episode of “Beardo & Weirdo,” the podcast he co-hosts with comedian Craig Gass. Mentioning that he is single for the first time in a long stretch, Kael said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Against Phil Labonte from All That Remains‘ advice, I actually go to therapy.”
Gass called Labonte‘s remark “one of the dumbest f**king things I’ve ever heard in my life.” Kael did not go that far. He split the difference instead, and the split is where the interesting part sits.
“I understand what he’s saying, though. There’s some truth in there… He basically said that men don’t need therapy. We need to take action. We get our good feelings in life from doing. Which is true, but he’s telling this in an interview. The interview — you’re talking about feelings and whatnot. You’re doing therapy in that interview. You’re not going to a therapist,” Kael clarified.
Kael then described what the sessions actually give him, and it is closer to Labonte‘s “men need something to do” framing than either man might expect.
He said: “So, it has definitely helped me out, with therapy, going in… It’s almost like a meditative thing for me. I’m taking a pause from everything else going on in the world. I’m focusing on me, making plans for the future, talking about things that upset me. And not for nothing, I’m clearly still very angry. So, channel that stuff into music. And even it gives me song ideas a couple times, really opening up and being vulnerable about stuff, and, like, ‘Oh, there’s a song idea.'”
Kael also acknowledged that the anger he carries has not simply gone away.
“It’s a simmering rage in there all the time,” Kael added. “I don’t know where it comes from. But we were talking to Frank Bello [of Anthrax on this podcast] just the other day, and he was talking about this music being an outlet for that sort of stuff. God bless music for you all for keeping me sane.”
Kael joined Five Finger Death Punch in 2011, replacing Matt Snell, and launched “Beardo & Weirdo” with Gass as a space for exactly this kind of conversation. Both hosts are sober, and the show has repeatedly turned to addiction, grief and recovery alongside the comedy. Bello has been Anthrax‘s bassist since 1984 and wrote about his own family trauma in his 2021 memoir Fathers, Brothers, And Sons: Surviving Anguish, Abandonment, And Anthrax.
Labonte set the argument running in June on “Today’s Boondoggle Podcast” with host Bill Bailey, where he was discussing his 2024 op-ed “The Silent Crisis: Why Society Is Failing Men And Boys“. He tied rising male suicide, depression and withdrawal from education and dating to what he described as the influence of feminism and the political left, and threw his weight behind a House bill to create a White House council on fathers and sons.
His line on treatment was the part that travelled: “Suicide among men my age — 50 and above — the rates are up. Men have to have meaning. Men need something to do. The idea that men can go to therapy and that’s gonna solve their problems is ridiculous. Therapy is for women. Men don’t solve their problems by talking. Men solve their problems through action. So men should be doing things with other men, like building things, going out and fixing cars, whatever it is. But those kind of activities are what will help a man feel accomplished, help a man feel like he’s got purpose. Just going and talking to a therapist, that’s not what fixes men. That’s not what fixes men at all. Men need goals that are achievable, and they need to make progress to those goals. That kind of stuff is what will help a man feel empowered, feel good about himself. That’s the kind of stuff that men need. And the idea that all of society is telling men, ‘Oh, you should be more like women,’ or, ‘You should go to therapy,’ none of these things help men. And the evidence is in the statistics.”
Former Cradle Of Filth keyboardist Lindsay Schoolcraft, whose third solo album Harrowing arrived on June 19 and documents her recovery from narcissistic abuse and alcohol addiction, called that position extremely toxic and pointed out that Labonte holds no clinical qualification.
Speaking to Blabbermouth, she rejected Labonte‘s framing outright.
“He’s not a healthcare professional, he’s not a psychologist, he’s not a therapist,” she said.
She continued, drawing on her own life to make her point.
“This is my opinion and I’m not a professional either — I have a lot of male friends in therapy and it’s done them a world of wonder and has transformed their lives because you can do healing work and then you can do growing work, and there’s life coaching. You can come out on the other side. You don’t have to struggle.”
Schoolcraft called the message a damaging one.
“Discouraging people from going to therapy, especially men — that’s an extremely toxic, masculine view that is ultimately an opinion from the patriarchy that has done a lot of damage to society and is the reason why it’s crumbling right now,” she said.
She also took a personal swipe at Labonte, suggesting he was the one in need of help.
“Discouraging people from going to therapy, especially men — that’s an extremely toxic, masculine view that is ultimately an opinion from the patriarchy that has done a lot of damage to society and is the reason why it’s crumbling right now. I don’t know… I think he probably does need to go to therapy and is a scared little boy who cares too much about the scared little boy inside, his inner child and is scared of what his macho homies are going to think of him.”
Drawing a comparison to physical medicine, Schoolcraft stressed that seeking help should carry no stigma.
“There should be no shame in getting help. If your brain is broken, you need a doctor. If you broke a bone, you’re not going to leave the bone broken; you’re going to get help. You’re not going to get a Band-Aid. You’re going to get it reset and cast and x-rayed. That’s what therapy is. It’s healing the brain. But I don’t think that’s a very good message, especially for young men who could be struggling.”
Labonte answered her on X (formerly Twitter) on June 22, arguing that critics were attacking a position he never took and citing research showing lower success rates for men in talk therapy.
“Last week I was on a podcast, and it got to the topic of mental health and stuff. And I said that therapy is for women. Now, studies have shown that therapy does actually work better for women, that men have a lower success rate, for a variety of different reasons. And that really upset people — like, this true thing that I said, really upset people. There were a lot of people that were coming to my X page and really worked up, and there were a lot of people that even went to the band’s Instagram page. And most of the time they were saying basically straw man arguments, saying that, ‘Oh, you don’t think that men should talk about their problems. You don’t think that men should do this,’ and da, da, da. I didn’t say that. I said that therapy is for women,” he said at the time.
He then addressed the personal nature of much of the criticism, including Schoolcraft‘s remarks.
“But there was another thing that happened a lot, and it was a lot of people were doing ad hominems, like this particular lady here, Lindsay. I don’t know her at all. But there was a lot of people that said, ‘Oh, he needs therapy.’ They were ad hominem saying, ‘You’re a little boy,’ blah, blah, blah. ‘You shouldn’t be saying these things,’ and, ‘You’re just a scared little boy, and you should go to therapy.’ And I’m, like, ‘Why are you saying that I should go to therapy?’ I’ve already told you, therapy’s for women.”
Kael‘s comments are notable because they come from another established musician rather than from one of Labonte‘s previous critics, and it lands differently from the others because he is not arguing that Labonte is wrong about men. He is arguing that Labonte proved the opposite case by sitting down and talking about his feelings for an hour.
Labonte, who describes himself as a right winger, founded All That Remains and has fronted the platinum-selling band across multiple Billboard-charting releases. He also contributes to “Timcast IRL“, the podcast hosted by Tim Pool.
