About
Bodi-wan, also called the Masked Metalhead or sometimes dubbed "the son of Halford", is a Christian musician who plays guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, and sings. He writes, records, mixes, and masters his own music. His music is an extension of emotion to promote the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He believes in the absolute authority of the 66 books of Scripture in the Old and New Testament.
Read the Extended Biography here.
Read the Extended Biography here.
Bodi-wan Short Biography
Bodi-wan or the Masked Metalhead is the stage name for David Hodge. He was saved by faith through the grace of God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ at the age of 9 in 1983. He grew up in Illinois and earned a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering.
His music career began in high school when he was enlisted to sing for a youth Christian band in 1991-1992 dubbed Zeo, which means on fire in Greek. This is not to be confused with Zao, a metalcore band. After these brief years, he went off to college. Bodi-wan wrote three songs with this band that were never recorded.
After a tryout, he took the vocal helm of a secular band in in 1994-1995 in St. Louis, MO that was reforming called Bad Reaction and they became known as Aftrshok. He played with them for about 2 years. Due to conflicts in the direction of the band and other factors such as long drive (over 2 hours one way), it was best to move on. It was a cordial leave as both the band and vocalist wanted to part ways. Although it was the band that made this initial call, it was a relief to finally be free to start fresh. The only recording done in these years was low-quality demo on a 4-track tape drive in the middle of the night.
After this, Bodi-wan took the reigns of a new project that included his brother, who had become quite a guitarist, and his cousin who was a double bass drummer. Having utilized a multitude of bass players and few rhythm guitarists this new band Ancient Silenze had quite the underground following in Western Illinois in 1996-1999. They recorded a direct-to-CD album with five-songs. The quality was average at best, but done live with no ability to edit or do cut-ins. Nevertheless, it was was popular with the fans.
Bodi-wan controlled most of the new lyrical content which kept the music clean and with Christian bent. Even so, the band was still dominated by secularists as were the cover songs. They often played live and did a number of covers from Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Fight, Poison, Saxon, Ozzy, and a few others. Bodi-wan's ability to sing Rob Halford was a sight to behold, which is why some aptly called him "the son of Halford". The biggest problem was the distance between members, some over 4 hours away from each others.
During all these years, it's was interesting to see the unique appearances of Bodi-wan. He once went to a party with many former Sylent Tyger members (popular in Western Illinois from the late 1980s and early 1990s). He took the microphone when they didn't have a singer and sang 3-4 songs live off-the-cuff. These were covers of Cinderella, Judas Priest, and Poison.
While recording some 4MJ live shows, which features incredible guitarist Rick Pendergast (who used to play with Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater fame in his early days with Inner Sanctum) in Southern Illinois, he would often come on stage to sing the final encore song-You've Got Another Thing Coming by Judas Priest.
At one show, his brother was available and took the second guitar slot and performed that same encore song with Bodi-wan on vocals. There was no recording of that instance though. The first time that Bodi-wan took the stage with 4MJ, that was recorded (quality is a bit lower) and it was an amazing act and none of the performers had ever played that song together.
But Bodi-wan finally decided to do something for which he had only hoped. He returned to write Christian songs, which is where his heart was, where he would play all the instruments, record, mix, and master them into an album. His experience working with secular bands, learning to play multiple instruments, live shows, and his knack for learning how to use an 8-track tape recording studio poised him to do something unique.
In Bodi-wan's early years (2001-2002), he recorded with an tape-8-track quality album called A Candle in the Darkness (utilizing some tracks from his initial demo practice/starter project album Evilution). In the Masked Metalhead's follow-up, transitioning from tape to digital, is an album called X-Secular. It is also a taste of how his abilities have grown.
We are looking forward to his third full feature. Meanwhile, Bodi-wan's work with his brother is ongoing and hopefully can ramp up to complete a metal/power metal anthology. a big portion is recorded and ready but several songs are simply not complete yet.
