Prog metal plus ancient texts adds up to Balistic’s genre-bending ‘A Parson’s Tale’

Let’s talk musical genres.

Balistic firmly established itself in the heavy metal genre when Dave Fox, Brian Kneasel, and Mark McNelley formed the Central Pennsylvania band in 1992. After Fox left in 2004, Kneasel, the lead singer and McNelley, lead vocalist, carried on for a short stint with a fill-in bassist.

The band staged a reunion tour in 2012 and a few years later Fox and McNelley formed a cover band, but it took another 13 years for Balistic to return with another reunion in the form of a new album that seriously stretches the boundaries of its musical genre.

“A Parson’s Tale” by Balistic, (available for download) released last December, melds in funk, hip-hop, jazzy chords, and soft, comforting piano into an album with a title worthy of Geoffrey Chaucer. “Weird stuff you don’t normally hear in metal,” Fox, who plays a Hammond B-3 organ in a track with opening chords that could be mistaken for an Isaac Hayes tune, is quoted as saying in the band’s press kit.

This all adds up to what Fox categorizes as progressive metal.

“A Parson’s Tale” caught the attention of the Central Pennsylvania Hall of Fame, which nominated Balistic for best metal band in the 7^th annual Central Pennsylvania Music Awards in Lancaster. The award on March 4 instead went to Lancaster’s Making a Mockery, but the recognition means a lot to Fox, 62, who faces the prospect of becoming the next overnight sensation despite having spent the decades since his youth performing live music.

“And I was incredibly humbled by that,” Fox says of the nomination.

We spoke with Fox and Kneasel at Fox’s home recording studio in Annville Township.

In addition to original members Fox, Kneasel, and McNelley, Balistic’s drummer and percussionist Don Hosler joined the band in the early 2000s. Lead and backing vocalist Angie Culpepper, who goes by the stage name Angie Pepper, is new to the band with the release of “A Parson’s Tale” in December.

McNelley started to encourage Fox to write the music and lyrics for “A Parson’s Tale” when he and Fox formed their cover band in 2017-18.

“(McNelley) said to me, ‘we ought to do another album.’ He was always a fan of a song on the third album we did that was about lust,” Fox says. “After that, the cover band kind of fell apart.”

Within a couple of years, everything everywhere fell apart. Some time into the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox tore a bicep at his day job and found himself quarantined at home with nothing to do but read and write.

“I started reading a lot of texts about sin and virtue and the seven deadly sins, and that type of stuff,” Fox says. “That originated from the older orthodox and Catholic writings from the third century, fourth century. Religion at the time wanted to explain why people did the things they do.”

Rooted in a narrative about the seven deadly sins with a title worthy of Chaucer, a 14^th-century writer and poet, Fox and bandmate Kneasel have what they believe could become an epic rock opera.

“I envisioned that since (Dave) brought the concept up, because I keep hearing all these characters and actors coming on stage playing out all the skits,” Kneasel says.

Fox updated the orthodox and Catholic writings to the modern day.

“Lucifer is a game show host,” in the record, he says. “He’s offering all these prizes, and people are falling for it. I wrote the lyrics at first and found that’s incredibly hard to do. Because I had to shoehorn all the words into it. And I was thinking, ‘Boy, this is what Rush goes through – what they did go through,’” Fox says, referring to the legendary Canadian hard rock group. “’Cause Neil (Peart) would write lyrics and Alex (Lifeson) and Geddy (Lee) would put music to it, and that’s why their songs ended up the way they were. I edited a lot, too.”

Lead vocalist McNeeley simplified some lyrics a bit. Lead guitarist Kneasel helped Fox edit, including striking out some of the more obscure, multi-syllable words.

“He’s very smart when it comes to rhyming words,” Kneasel says of Fox. Fox in turn credits Kneasel with his skills in editing the lyrics.

“Without Brian, this wouldn’t have gotten done,” Fox says. “There’s no way. It wouldn’t have sounded like that. He got it right away.”

The seven deadly sins are narrated in nine tracks in “A Parson’s Tale.” Fox runs down the tracks:

1. Angel of Light: Lucifer introduces himself to the world as a game show host. “He is asking God, ‘Why are you paying attention to them when you should be paying attention to me?’ I’m not preaching to people. I’m just saying that the old traditions came along to explain why people are the way they are.
2. Black Hole Heart: Greed and mercy. “Black Hole Heart” is a modern day “Christmas Carol,” Fox says. When the piano comes in, the ghost appears to show you mercy so you can be free.
3. I Am Your God: Pride and humility. “I got a lot of that from the way some people acted over COVID. They took it among themselves to police everybody. They shouldn’t have done that.”
4. Hate Loving You: Envy and kindness.
5. Poison: Lust and chastity.
6. Trapped in Ice: About sloth and diligence. “A person gets where they do less and less and less and they get to the point where they can’t do anything.”
7. Drowning In It: Gluttony and abstinence, in the track with the Isaac Hayes-style intro and with guest guitar solo by Matt Creter. “I almost didn’t get it until the end,” Kneasel says of the track. “I would say this took all of us longest to understand.”
8. I Am Cain: About anger, Cain and Abel, with guest solo guitarist Eric Wirsing. “Typical road rage song,” Fox says. “The most technically difficult song we have. It changes key three, four times.”
9. Forgiven: “Wraps the whole album up,” Fox says, “because it gives you the whole message. Yes, things are bad, yes, you screwed up, but you can be forgiven.”

The re-reunion Balistic hasn’t toured with the new album, yet, but that’s where it gets tricky in the current live music environment.

“Especially something as eclectic as this, you don’t want to get lumped in with your average local metal band,” Kneasel says. “This is something different. I don’t even want to play unless we can play the entire album.”