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Franklin's Garage to Stage
UK band - Gospels of Odin, interview with Jay Ball
Jay Ball shares the story behind his metal project Gospels of Odin, a creative outlet that evolved into a powerful father-son collaboration when his 15-year-old son Levi revealed unexpected vocal talents. The project has gathered nearly 9,000 streams in just four weeks since release, demonstrating how digital platforms have revolutionized music distribution.
• Founded Gospels of Odin about 18 months ago after 40 years in the music industry
• Established the J Ball Guitar Academy in 1994 to share his musical knowledge
• Grew up during the British wave of heavy metal, drawing influence from Motorhead, Tags of Pantang, and Def Leppard
• Handles multiple instruments, production, mixing, and video creation for the project
• Discovered his son Levi's hidden vocal talents when the teen recorded vocals for "Bone Crusher"
• Shoots professional-quality music videos using drones in the scenic Derbyshire Dales
• Draws inspiration from Viking mythology and horror films for thematic elements
• Currently has 28 additional songs ready for potential future albums
• Considering forming a full band for live performances in the future
Keep it metal, keep it real. Just write from the heart, and people are always going to love it, they're always going to accept it, they're always going to want it, and people are always going to talk about it.
https://open.spotify.com/track/3tL4yII8U3iDoTNMQ9VkCF?si=ZpvQ3OcrQaiAF-2mf5UhYw
https://youtu.be/44yxXk4V2Kw?si=LaVoxaiOYUxZNTX4
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Hi and welcome to Franklin's Garage to Stage podcast. My name is Rob Wardrums Franklin and my co-host is Dana Thunderbase Franklin.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:So with us today we've got a special guest all the way from the UK, mr Jay Ball, who is pretty much the leader, founder and everything of a band called Gospels of Odin. How are you doing, sir?
Jay Ball:Yeah, I'm good, Dana. Thank you, you guys.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:Awesome, it's a pleasure to have you on here. So maybe you can tell the world how you would describe your band to anybody that's never heard of you guys or listened to you, how would you describe Gospels of Odin to the world?
Jay Ball:Yeah, gospels of Odin is really a project that I started about just short of 18 months ago. I'd got a load of songs that I wanted to sort of really get back into recording again. I'd not been recording for some years I'd been playing music for 40 years and I wanted to sort of do something fresh, something new, something interesting and I live and breathe sort of metal music, not in any particular genres, I like all genres of metal music, and so I wanted to create something that was basically was fun to play, was fun to record and produce some really good songs. I think, with having 40 years of experience being in the music industry and of writing and recording a lot of music over those years, I found that when I sort of put the studio together and this project together for recording that I found a new lease of life with this project. It was really cool, it was really interesting and exciting and I'm really happy with it.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Yeah, I love the tunes. I've listened to a number of them and I really really like them. Thank you, can you tell us a little bit about? I understand you have a guitar academy. What is that all about?
Jay Ball:Yeah, when I was, I started off playing guitar in the 80s and obviously as a young guy, in my bedroom, at sort of 14, 15 years old, and back in those days you didn't really sort of have, you didn't have guitar teachers and you didn't have any sort of way of teaching guitar.
Jay Ball:What we'd do is sort of make somebody had learned, I don't know, they'd learned Ace of Spades by Motorhead or something, and then we'd all pile around to the house and they'd show us how to play it, and then I'd learn something like Iron man by Black Sabbath, and so that's how we learned to play guitar back in the early 80s. So when I got into my 20s and I'd done a lot of music I'd been doing music a lot for a living I decided that I wanted to sort of go into teaching, because some people say that you know, when you start teaching it's sort of like you're a failed musician, and I totally I've always disagreed with that because I always think if you're good at what you do, particularly in playing an instrument like the guitar, then why not pass that on to the next generation and the generation after that?
Jay Ball:So the whole reason for starting up the J ball guitar Academy, which I started in 1994, was um was to give something back and and uh, to be honest, I loved it. It was, it was, uh, an amazing part of um, of of me as a person growing more um as a musician and being able to trade those um, those guitar skills that I've learned. Because back in the early 90s guitar uh lessons were we didn't have the internet back then, remember. So you you would go to a guitar teacher or you would go to a guitar shop or a music shop, and that's where you tended to find a guitar teacher, or you would go to a guitar shop or a music shop and that's where you tended to find a guitar tutor. Whereas I decided I had a studio at home, that I would just basically open up my studio, open up my home and become a tutor from home. So I started my own guitar academy.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:Nice, cool yeah, we've talked before on some of our other episodes of how kids today have no excuse for not. I mean they've. They've got so much availability to the internet and music lessons and and videos of the pros even showing you you know how to do certain chords and you know and stuff on the internet. It's funny. But, um, you know, back in the day we're talking about how you know, we just keep playing tapes and rewind it and play it again, and play it again to try to figure out what the song is, and you know, until the tape started getting all warped because you know there was no automatic tabs on the internet to look shit up. So, yeah, um. So my question is you know, in every musician's career there's, there's a point where you know at an early age or even later on, where they're like wow, this is what I want to do for a living. Early age or even later on where they're like, wow, this is what I want to do for a living.
Jay Ball:When did what was the moment that told you, shit, music is what I want to do I think growing up um in the early 80s I was fortunate because the music in that era was like phenomenal and obviously I'm I'm I'm english, I'm british, and so you guys are clearly aware of the British wave of new heavy metal and that was just like. Some of those bands were just incredible and we're like 14, 15 years old at this period of time and we're hearing like Tags of Pantang, and they're from my country. We're hearing Motorhead from my country. We're hearing some of the bands from that era, like Def Leppard, who went on and became phenomenally big. You know, sort of I suppose they were like world dominators and probably still are. So.
Jay Ball:For us growing up in that era it was kind of like it felt exciting because that wave of British music was in our country and and we kind of felt a little bit sort of to be a part of that was really cool and I know that um people like, going back in the day, what lars would come over from um, from metallica, and he loved that wave of british heavy metal and he came and sort if you've ever read his biographies I'm sure people have he used to bunk down at people's houses, right right.
Jay Ball:And sort of basically as a young boy himself he would hang out with these guys in these bands and he took that back to America. So I kind of feel in a way that we helped create that wave. Those Metallica bands of that early era were definitely founded from from our country, so I felt proud to be part of that at that age.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:We were lucky yeah, I agree 100%. Hey, I've got another question for you here about your. Obviously you're talented in many different ways, but do you also play percussion for all your songs?
Jay Ball:Being a drummer, that's, you know the thing I listen to the first and foremost. So yeah, I am a multi-instrumentalist. I mean, guitar is my main instrument, but I kind of found that I was always. When I used to put bands together years ago, when I was younger, back in the 80s and 90s, I always tended to be sort of the driving force. I was the songwriter. I tended to be the person that would book gigs. I was a person that would sort of keep the band in.
Jay Ball:I even drove the band man. You know what I mean. It was the be all and end all sort of. It was my little project. I never.
Jay Ball:I always wanted equals in the band and we had equal, obviously, band members. But I think my drive and motivation was probably much more than those. So as I got better at playing and I kind of knew what because I've been playing a long time I knew what styles I wanted to play. So over the years I kind of thought, well, could we try this sort of beat instead of that beat? And so I could jump on the kit and I could knock that out and they'd be like, yeah, okay, Then could we try this sort of track style of bass on there. And so the bass player would be like, yeah, that's cool.
Jay Ball:And then the singer I'm not a singer, I can sing, but I wouldn't say I was a great singer. But I could always write lyrics and I could always see how those lyrics would fit into into what I was writing. So I didn't sort of take it on from a point of view that I wanted to be that sort of the man in control as such. I just had a passion for writing music and I could hear things slightly different in my own mind and the only way I could get that out and portray it to say, the bass player in the band was to sort of you know, this is kind of the riff I've written on the guitar. How about trying this? And then, don't get me wrong, there was plenty of scope for them to improvise and have their own inspiration with it. But I always found that I wanted to play more than just the guitar, although I love playing the guitar. So I felt like, well, if I was going to shoebox into just playing griffs and lead guitar parts, then maybe I was doing myself an injustice really.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Okay, what type of a kit do you have? I mean, what do you play and what you've recorded? What kind of kit are you using right now?
Jay Ball:The kits we use. We tend to use, like a lot of the drums that I've used, particularly on the, on the gospel stuff. We've used this we've basically sampled the kit drums, uh, and the snares and the, and we've cut them up and we've sort of put them into the studio behind me and I've. So I've I've sort of created the drum beats from the samples that we've used. Okay, but I've been able, because I can play the drums, I've been able to execute them in a way where they sound live, right, they don't sound like a drum machine.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:You're right, they don't either.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:So with this, especially with this new album that you did, god's eye, yeah, did you do everything? Did you do the bass tracks too, and the guitar tracks and obviously I think it was your son that did the vocals on it but what I've read is that you did the mixing, the mastering and everything on there. Where did you get the experience to do this? Is this something that was taught formally somewhere or did you just learn it along the way?
Jay Ball:No, again, I'm self-taught all the way through. It was just a case of I got a good ear for music. I listen to music all day, every day. I have done it for many, many years now. I get up, I put music on Music's with me all day. I come home, have my tea music. Now I get up, I put music on music's with me all day. I come home, have my tea music on. I just listen to music all the time. So I'm sort of super inspired by many different musicians.
Jay Ball:So when it came to sort of writing God's Eye, I'd kind of got. I'd got so many different ideas that I wanted to sort of put together that it was easy to do. And because I've been playing for sort of 40 years, I've had a studio since 1991. I had my first studio. So I've had a studio for what now? 35 years.
Jay Ball:So I kind of got used to being able albeit an office studio. Then I got used to being able, albeit an office studio. Then I got used to being able to sort of, uh, put a drum beat down and put a bass line down, and, and because I listen to a lot of music, I kind of think I love the sound of that. Can I recreate that in something that I want to do? Uh, and again coming down to sort of, if you guys have obviously been in the studio, you know yourselves, you can sort of solo everything off and just listen exclusively to the bass line and add little bits of EQ and you can play about with things and make it sound much bigger and wholer than perhaps it is just sitting there in your lap. So yeah, there is a bit of wizardry in there.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Okay, cool, I've got kind of a two-part question for you. Yeah, what is your songwriting process? And secondly, what are your plans for putting those songs into like a live performance? Is that something you've been thinking about doing?
Jay Ball:yeah, the um talking about the, the first part of the question, the process of writing. I tend to find that because of I'm fortunate enough that I've got I've got four kids and all my kids listen to metal music nice way to way to teach them right, right, the right way.
Jay Ball:Yeah, yeah so my, my eldest son is, uh, he's 20, and he'll come to me and he'll go oh, dad, you've got, you've got to check out kublai khan to the x or something. I'm like um, I'm like cool, put him on. And he played me something, for example, like Ampile was a song off, that was one of their. It's a little snip of a song that's about 30, 40 seconds long, and he played me this part and he was like that reminds me, dad, of what you sound like when you're just chug, chug, chugging on your guitar. And so I listened to that cube like on, and then I thought I'll download the album and I have a little listen to the album and I was like, yeah, I really like the sound of that and to me it was kind of a new, fresher sound.
Jay Ball:Uh, to him obviously it was just sort of something mainstream. So then I kind of think to myself, okay, could I write a song similar to that sort of style? Could I, I put my own stamp on it, or could I actually take inspiration from that? So because I listen to a lot of music I'm just using Kublai Khan as one example I sort of, yes, I could sit there and think, well, yeah, I could replicate that particular song or this song, and so it tends to start with being inspired by a band. That kind of kicked my ass a little bit and I was like I love that, I'd love to sound like that, and then it kind of grows from there.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Okay, nice.
Jay Ball:The live aspect of it is a little bit more tricky. I've obviously played live a lot in the past when I was a younger man. This project at the moment, gospels of Owe started off as sort of my little brainchild, and Levi's been into his metal since he was born. This sounds ridiculous, but I'd never heard him sing and my wife and I we went away on holiday and I came back We'd been away for a week and he said oh, dad, I've been up in the studio, I've been doing some recording. I was like, oh, cool. He said do you want to have a listen? So I was like, yeah, cool.
Jay Ball:So we came up into the studio and he'd done the vocals on Bone Crusher, which is off the album God's Art, and he sort of said he hit play on the play deck and I was just like whoa, where did that voice come from, man? And I was absolutely blown away. I was like I did not know that you could sing like that because he'd never came to me and said Dad, I want to be a singer, dad, I want to be in a band. He just sort of loves his metal, loves going to gigs, listens to music all the time like I do, but never sort of told me that he was practicing singing. And, as it came down to it, it he'd been practicing for about six months but never said anything to me and his voice just fit, fitted that song perfectly. And I was like, oh my god, that is awesome, we've got to, we've got to do something with this. And so then I made him a list of the songs that were on the first album and on God's Eye and said which of these songs do you fancy putting vocals on? Which do you think would work best for your voice? And we sort of had a chat about it and we picked out the songs that he wanted to do. And it's been amazing, the album came out before he'd had the chance to sort of do any more vocals. So he came to me to give you an idea, a perspective on time. It was February when he unleashed this amazing voice on me, and the album came out in April. So I was like dude, we ain't got time to rewrite the whole album now and put vocals on it. So what we'll do is, well, he picked five songs, he put the vocals onto those five songs and then we've got another 28 songs lined up, ready to go at some point in the future, which have not got all vocals on those yet.
Jay Ball:So, coming back to the question I know I'm going around the houses with, regarding playing live At the moment it's a father and son project, so I would need to find a bass player. I definitely need a second guitarist, um, and, and, and obviously we need a drummer. So I'm open to that. Yes, I am. Depending on how well this project goes, I am open to that okay, well, how long the flight is it from here?
Jay Ball:to here, to there. I mean you got bass, and drums right here thank you no, that album, that album's amazing.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:So with that and having your son involved with that I mean, of course, metal, rock and roll. He's got the bad rep of all the drugs, sex and rock and roll and all that. How do you talk to your son about coming into that life and staying away from the stuff that can ruin it?
Jay Ball:Especially it being family oriented. It is, uh, I think I don't worry about those things too much. At the end of the day, we, you know we, we are responsible for ourselves and you know we, um, I musicians, seasoned musicians that have been playing a long time and have never touched anything. I know I've got dead friends as well, so I kind of know what that seed is. But at the end of the day, I think he's 15. And so he's got to make his own mind of where he wants to go with this.
Jay Ball:At the moment we're putting Levi down as featured as the vocalist, because this isn't a five, six-piece band, this is just father and son. And the reason I wanted to do that was, a, because he was 15, and B because his voice is so good that I don't want him to feel that he's the singer in Gospels of Odin and he can't do anything else, because he's got his whole life in front of him and he's a really good vocalist. And Levi and I spoke about it in length really, and I said to Levi if we can use Gospels of Odin as a springboard for you as a vocalist, then you're not starting at the local pub playing a few gigs with your mates and kind of going around in circles and no disrespect, but not really going anywhere. We're sort of pitching you in a lot higher where a band that are looking for a younger band than Gospels of Odin, that are looking for a younger band than Gospels of Odin, that are looking for that type of singer. That would be perfect for him and I'd be happy for him to go on and have his musical career. But he's 15, so he's got a lot of time to get into that.
Jay Ball:My other son, solomon, he also is a singer. He's a great singer but he's a different style of voice to levi, but he's just sort of um, generally sort of left his singing in the shower and in the bedroom. He's not done anything with it yet, and so he's got the opportunity I've said to him to come on board, maybe on the second album now and do some vocals uh, and showcase what what he can do as well. Uh, I'm just loving the the opportunity to do this with my sons, oh yeah that's amazing.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Yeah, that's that's, that's great. And I've got a couple of kids and they just they haven't shown any interest at all in music, which kind of should surprise me, but but, yeah, I, I envy you do that. That's cool. Um, you've got some excellent videos out there. So my next question is basically how are you producing these videos and what type of equipment are you using, because the people that haven't seen them yet you've got to check out his website, which I will, or his socials, which we'll include on our website, but you've got to see these videos. They're amazing. So I just want to know basically how those are produced.
Jay Ball:I'm smiling because again, I am the video producer. Yeah, basically I just sort of decided that in order to, because when we used to write music and record it back in the 80s and 90s it's kind of like we used to go into the studio as a band, we'd record a demo, say four songs, and we'd probably pay £500, english pounds back then, which was probably about £2,000 or £3,000 in today's money. So we kind of put all our money into like going into the studio and recording four songs on a cassette and then we'd play gigs and we'd sell the cassettes and that's how we sort of made a little bit of money. But at the end of the day, between the gigs and then and the cassettes, we were sort of we still had to have a day job. We couldn't make that pay. Uh, it was kind of more beer money and fun money than anything else. So when I wanted to get into the project of gospels I wanted to sort of invest into the studio, which it did and then into the video side of it, because I thought nowadays the beauty is that we don't have to go into the studio, spend two and a half thousand pounds in today's money and then release a cassette and go and play live. Those aspects would still work.
Jay Ball:But the internet has changed everything. Social media has changed everything. It's like the old song that if I knew then what I know now, we'd have been famous many, many times over because the opportunity. It's never been easier now to get your music into a wider audience. We released God's Eye what 28 days ago, four weeks ago. Now we're punching nearly 9,000 streams. That's incredible. That's amazing. Four weeks of releasing a demo in 1980, we'd have probably sold 30 or 40 copies. Do you know what I mean?
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Yeah, yeah.
Jay Ball:So it's an incredible. The internet and the social media side of it is incredible. So the video side for me was just a natural progression. We've got the music out there. Let's just do the video. I bought a drone. I paid some decent money for the equipment. I bought a drone, which was fantastic to use on spellbinding. You can see it right coming down into the valleys and, by the way, that's my daughter in the video. Oh, really, okay, cool, my daughter. She. I was like you fancy being famous. Yeah, I'll put you on the big screen. I don't think she's had any office since, but maybe she will in time.
Jay Ball:I bet she will actually basically we went out and had some fun recording the video. I think at the end of the day we've got we live in a beautiful part of England. We've got the Derbyshire Dales, literally a stone's throw away from where we live, and the I'm talking about Spellbinder video. The actual location we used was a place called Stanton on the Peak, which is in the Derbyshire Dales, and it's got this really cool 4,000-year stone circle which has got all this sort of urban legend attached to it about apparently the core it. There's nine stones there and, um, apparently the nine stones of the circle were nine ladies that danced on sabbath and that they they were turned to stone and that's the sort of myth legend of the of the place. But that is very well. Um, it's one of the most popular sort of.
Jay Ball:There's many popular places to see in Derbyshire in England but that's one of the popular places to go for people that are into sort of more of the witchy and the sort of pagan-y sort of side of their music. There's sort of trees up there and people like make little white sort of symbols and pentagrams and they hang them in the trees and stuff. It's kind of got a whole witchy sort of vibe to it and it's a cool. It's got a cool, um, sort of a cool. The environment feels really good and the atmosphere is really cool up there and so, yeah, we went up there to shoot the video. The only problem we had was that because we were flying the drone up so high and you get sort of like you know, hundreds of people visiting there, we have to keep like bringing the drone back so high and you get sort of like you know, hundreds of people visiting there, we have to keep like bringing the drone back down and going.
Jay Ball:Excuse me, no photo bombing, just give me five minutes please, because I'm just trying to do a bit of filming. And then people were obviously coming up to us saying do you mind asking what, what, what you, what you're doing? We're like, yeah, we're shooting a video for a music video. Oh my god, that's, that's really cool. So yeah, it was a brilliant location and the drone was a game-changer for doing the videos okay.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:So you've had obviously a long musical career. What is one of your, your best moments that you that you've had? You know, whether it be a live show or or putting this Gospels Bowdoin project together, you know what would you consider, you know the pinnacle of your career so far that's a tough one.
Jay Ball:That that is a tough one. I think um because I've been in, because I've been playing music for 40 years now. I've got a lot of um. I've got a lot of memories and a lot of fantastic times playing live um. I was in a thrash band in the 80s when thrash was thrash.
Jay Ball:It was new, it was fresh and we used to call it speed metal back then. I think thrash was more of an American sort of name for it. In England we call it speed metal and you know, those days were brilliant. I was, you know, I was kind of living the dream myself. We had a great band.
Jay Ball:As the sort of 90s came in and it sort of the shift in music changed, we sort of disbanded and I went my own way and I decided that I wanted. I was really influenced in the early 90s by Alice in Chains. They're one of my all-time favourite bands and they'd released the Facelift album. I think it's 89 or 90, that album. And I kind of got this album and I was just like, wow, what is this? It was like the freshest, coolest album music-wise. I'd never heard anything like that back in 1989, 1990. So I was like I'm going'll put a band together just like this. This is cool. And so we kind of went. I put together a whole new bunch of guys and we came together and we put a band together called Tribe from our town and we did really well at the time. But again, we didn't have the internet and we didn't have the sort of the outlets that there are now. So we were back to recording the tape it was CD then recording CD, taking it to the gigs, sell them at the gigs played a lot of shows with Tribe and we thought we'd get signed.
Jay Ball:But unfortunately I suppose the problem with that era and that band was that the you were talking about it earlier the drugs of the drugs and rock and roll side of it sort of took over a little bit too much and it kind of it ruined the band. It kind of rehearsals got, certain members weren't tuning up to rehearsals on time and, yeah, things got a little bit. It went a little bit darker and it spoiled the band. Really I would say that element did spoil that band, but still amazing times. And then obviously I had other than my own Guitar Academy. I had a bit of a hiatus from being in a band for some years and Gospels was sort of knocking on my door. As I say, I'd got some New influences from some Amazing bands and I wanted to Pick the instruments Back up again and not just teach but start to write and record and Become a better musician Myself, which I think I did On the debut album.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Well, I'm sure enjoying what I'm listening to. Hey, speaking of performances, we have a moment we call oh shit, and this is basically an experience you've had that was either really bad, really embarrassing could be either at a live performance or a practice or during a recording, but just one of those moments where you just have to say oh, we were there's been a few.
Jay Ball:There's been a few. We, um, when we were in, when we were in the grunge band, we, um, we we had um a drummer who was uh, he was young and he sort of came to rehearsal and he'd been telling us about this older lady that he'd been seeing, that was married, and we were like, okay, dude, that's kind of not great, but you know, it's your life and as long as it sort of doesn't interfere with the band, that's fine. And so we'd got a string of gigs booked and we we played a lot of pubs back in those days. The pub scene back in the 90s was really big in England. It's not so much now. That's, the times have changed. But back then there was a lot of live venues that you could play.
Jay Ball:And we rocked up to this one venue. We were setting all the gear up and the landlord came out it was early came out, shook his hands, introduced himself, et cetera, and he was like, yeah, cool, you know. And he was like, oh, you know, love your band and we love your sort of music and everything. I was like, yeah, cool, and we're sort of just, we go to order some drinks from the bar and the guy in the band who's been seeing the older lady says I can't get my eyes on that. Why not? He's like because my elder lady works in the pub and we're like dude, I know I shit you not. She's married to the landlord that we're playing the gig to on the evening. So we were like, oh shit, well, let's just play anyway. And we did play and fortunately the guy didn't find out for some time. We were lucky that night, otherwise the gig would have been off.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Yeah, that could have went real bad.
Jay Ball:That was kind of an old shit moment. We were like shit, we're about to play.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:You're seeing the the landlord's wife just keep looking over like does he know, does he know?
Jay Ball:oh, yeah, that was crazy. We used to have these after show parties. They were always crazy oh yeah absolutely we, we. We were sort of the people in the band we always used to push each other musically but we'd always push each other for like stupid pranks and stupid things to do when we'd had too much to drink. Oh, yeah.
Jay Ball:And we'd done an after-show party one night and we had this little dare. We were talking about this house. That was probably 100 yards down the road and it got a swimming pool and the lads in the back. We said we'll set this little challenge. You've got to get strip naked. So you're absolutely naked. You've got to run down the main road, jump over the wall to where this mansion was, and the first one into the pool is the winner. So yeah, after a few drinks it's like, yeah, that sounds like fun, I'm up for that.
Jay Ball:So, me and the bass player, we're off. We're running down the road, cars are pipping at us. What are you doing? I'm back at him because I was a lot taller and skinnier than him. So I run and jump over the wall. I didn't realize the wall's about three foot on our side. On the other side it's dropped down six or seven foot. So I just plumb it down onto the floor, bearing in mind I'm naked, and the spirit lights come on and there's two dogs in the garden. Oh damn, I'm whacking his head off. He's gone. He's like he left me. I tell you, I never got off that wall so quick, my friend. I got off that wall. I bet Knees bleeding, hands bleeding, straight back to the house. Yeah, that was an oh shit moment.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Yes, it is. Oh, that's funny.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:So the name of the band Gospels of Odin. How did that come about? Is there a story behind that?
Jay Ball:My love of Vikings. I love everything sort of Nordic. I'm very much. I'm not a religious man but I love the whole sort of.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:So you follow the ascetic.
Jay Ball:I've always loved that sort of stuff. I think those things kind of go hand in hand with metal and the music we listen to, anyway, it seems to.
Jay Ball:So for me, I was kind of like we could have called the band Odin, but I thought that was a little bit too. You know, it was kind of four letters, it was a little bit too short. So I was kind of like, yeah, if we're going to bring other people into the band over a period of time, maybe to become a live act, then we'll become like like the gospels of Odin, and so I wanted to introduce, yeah, the whole, the whole Viking vibe, which I love.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:So do you follow the Asatru religion, so to speak?
Jay Ball:No, I'm not. I'm not a religious person. Really. I don't. I don't follow it. It's sort of I'm not an anti-religious person but I don't follow religion as such. But I just love the.
Jay Ball:I just love this sort of feel of the Gospels of Odin is sort of like the music really can be quite brutal, it can be quite beautiful in places, it can be masculine and it can be feminine. So it's kind of it had got the whole sort of. For me it had got the whole sort of Viking feel to to it and I just loved the feel that we could do something that was sort of related to that. Because I know, like the hit series vikings, which was like the um uh, you guys have probably seen it which is a few years old now, was a huge hit over here in england. It was a massive sort of tv hit and um, I kind of I just loved the idea of you'll hear it in some of my introductions, for example on Killing Fields, when you've got a whole sort of Nordic battle about to begin, and I just loved the energy of that.
Jay Ball:I thought to put that into music was something a little bit different. But also it kind of gave the songs a new dimension and for people that loved their sort of Viking, nordic sort of feel to the music, I thought they'd really get Gospels of Olden. They'd like it, they'd love it.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:And I like that new video featuring the Vikings on that hill. That's very cool.
Jay Ball:And once again we'll put a link to that on our website.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:But, that's a very cool video.
Jay Ball:That's going to come out at the end of this week actually, so hopefully by this time next week. It should be, it should be live, it should be out.
Jay Ball:Yeah, oh, sweet yeah we just shot that one this last couple of weeks I want to do. I want to do probably three or four more videos off the songs on god's eye, um, as I get time and chance to do them, because some of the songs, as I mentioned earlier, levi's only sung on five. There's 12 songs on the album, or 13, including Paranoid, and so they were instrumentals, they were written as instrumental songs. So the video brings a whole new entity to listening to the songs. And again now, particularly if you listen to your music by Spotify, which I do and a lot of people in England do it's very popular. You can get the video versions of it as well, so it gives it a different dimension as well. So, necessarily being an instrumental song, the video lifts that and gives it a little bit more three-dimensional sort of feel to it, which works well. I think yes, it does.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:Yeah, and how you're speaking about that is, you know, especially with those instrumentals. Like you know, welcome to the Apocalypse. You know I love that song and how. You know just the dynamics in it, you know how you're saying some can be masculine and some can be, you know it's just got so many different feels to it, all within one song. It's amazing.
Jay Ball:Yeah, thank you. It comes down to. I think again, these two go very close. I've always been a phenomenal heavy metal fan. I love so many different bands from so many different styles. I hate to say that's thrash or that's new metal or that I just love metal. I think hand in hand that goes with horror movies, my love of horror movies. If you notice behind me, you'll see my. Amityville windows in my studio. I've been an avid horror fan for decades. I love horror films.
Jay Ball:And so when I tend to write music for example, like the Apocalypse song or the Symphony of the Undead, another song off that album. It comes back to my love of horror and I kind of wanted to sort of be able to sort of create the feeling of a horror movie in a song and so to be able to take that and use that as because there's no vocals in those, again they are, I suppose, loosely instrumental because they have got there is talking and the story being talked about yeah.
Jay Ball:I wanted to be able to sort of yeah, create that horror feel to it, and one of the videos I'm going to release I've not written or recorded the video yet, but I'm planning to do is for Symphony of the Undead, which is one of the songs off Dodds Eye, because it's just a classic zombie story and I just want to do a video for it because I love zombies and I think it'd be really cool oh yeah, it will be cool.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:So what are your plans for the future? I mean, what I? I see that you've got you released 12 of the 40 songs. Are you going to release more of those songs? And then, what else do you have planned for the immediate future?
Jay Ball:yeah, we've got um. I wrote 40 songs, um, for gospels of owen and I was kind of just enjoying writing you. You know, I've been writing those songs over a period of just short of 18 months and, um, what I found was that there's certain periods in at that time. For example, if I went back to april of last year of 2024, that's when I wrote sort of spellbinder, and then in in the may I wrote um alchemy, which is another song off god's eye, and I wrote a few other songs that are not on the album, that are ready to go on another album, and they were sort of written in a probably a two or three month period where I was kind of really into that sort of vibe. And then, yeah, no, no, no worries, my friend, yeah I think you'd pretty much answered the question.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:We were just asking what your immediate future was with the band, but I think you pretty much addressed it. But, um, anything else, you want to tell our listeners as far as uh, what you've got in, uh, in the works, what's coming up next for you?
Jay Ball:yeah, we've got um. When I wrote the, the songs for for god's eye this is an overspillage you said 28 songs and I think those songs I don't know um how many of those songs, I don't know um how many of those songs will will will get used again, but there's potentially another couple of albums worth of songs there. They're written in the same vein as as God's eye as well. So the um, the, the seamless, the pretty much seamless. If you release a second album, yeah, I appreciate it. It's been lovely speaking to you guys.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:Yeah, great talking to you and you know this being a Garage to Stage, you know podcast any insights to new musicians out there that you can pass along?
Jay Ball:Yeah, absolutely. I think the music scene in England is buzzing at the moment. There's a lot of bands, there's a lot of good venues popping up. It's vibrant and I think there's a lot of bands, there's a lot of good venues popping up. It's vibrant and I think there's a lot of talent out there now. We said it earlier in this podcast that it's much easier for people to learn to play instruments nowadays than it was back in the day. All you've got to do is just sort of believe in yourselves and what you want to do, and for me, keep it. Metal, just keep it real.
Jay Ball:Just right from the heart, and people are always going to love it, they're always going to accept it, they're always going to want it and people are always going to talk about it. So, for me, keep it metal, keep it metal.
Rob (Wardrums) Franklin:Alright, jay, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, it really has. Thank you, jay, thank you very much.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:It's been a pleasure. It really has. Yeah, thank you guys. Yeah, we'd love to have a follow-through with you, maybe a little bit down the road, to get another album out or put another CD together and do some touring. Absolutely, we'd love to hear about what happens with you in the future. So thank you for being with us.
Jay Ball:Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's an exciting time.
Dana (Thunderbass) Franklin:So, yeah, yeah, church, but I'd love that absolutely.
Jay Ball:Thank you, jay. Thank you, jay, and best regards to you and your son, your whole family. Yeah, thank you, take care guys. Thank you, bye.
