BALLISTIC: BANG YOUR HEAD Setlist Revealed

BALLISTIC mainman Tom Gattis (ex-DEUCE, TENSION, WARDOG) has posted the following message on the band's official web site:

"Here’s the songs we'll be playing at the GRAVE DIGGER/[Bang Your Head] shows:

01. Collision Course
02. Gone Ballistic
03. Corpse Stacked High
04. Undefeated
05. Call Me Evil
06. Silent Killer
07. Wrecking Crew
08. Threshold of Pain
09. Watch Me Do It
10. Bloodbath

"And maybe a few more love songs, we'll see. There will also be a fusion jam session worked in. I am going into the audience to listen to that because I want to make sure the first time I heard it wasn't a dream.

"Interesting observation: apparently at the ICED EARTH show in Scottsdale, the place was packed solid, and the striking thing was that the audience was made up of teen-early twenties kids! Yep, something’s happening. Could it be that the Goat-boy vocals and lobotomized rhythms of Nu (Old) Metal are really dying?

"I honestly don't care either way (really!),but it is cool to see that the truism of a cyclic pop culture has held fast with the return of '80s metal (ICED EARTH isn't the only example as you know). It also bolsters the notion that if you are playing an out-of-date style of music, it's better to just wait it out and get better as a band instead of constantly re-inventing yourself over and over after the fact.

"As for BALLISTIC: I think it's safe to say that even in its heyday, this form of music wasn't REALLY popular, and I went into this band with the crystal clear knowledge of that fact. The bands I liked on a visceral level never made much money, and unfortunately (and falsely) in today's culture, money and virtue are synonymous. You always hear music-based arguments where someone eventually says, 'Well, it's making money,' but money could be made by selling crack to elementary school kids. Moral is money and virtue ARE NOT synonymous. Unfortunately there has been such a masterful job of brainwashing by people interested in taking as much of your money as they can, that the two are inseparable by the general public. But there is more virtue in getting paid for looking good and playing bad, than there is in slaughtering civilians. So I think corporate music whores are still at a much higher level than say, terrorists.

"You could argue that this style of music has gotten me nowhere. Never assume that if a musician hasn't made it 'big' that they are 'nowhere' and they are living poorly. You can never really tell judging solely from a musical viewpoint what an artist does or doesn’t have going for them. So it would be incorrect to assume I'm trying to make it big every time I put out a CD. It would be absolutely correct to say I'm having my cake and eating it too."