INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
THIRTY WOUNDS, ONE RECLAMATION — Surprise, surprise, it's about to get a little dark. With their debut record, 30 Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wounds to the Head, bodyimage invites listeners into an uncompromising exploration of feminine rage, self-destruction and the reclamation of identity. Spanning ten tracks, the genre-defying project moves through industrial techno, dark dream pop, trap, indie synth, and hardcore techno, refusing to settle into a single sonic or emotional identity. Instead, bodyimage embraces the friction and creates a gritty, immersive world where intimacy and isolation, desire and destruction, and love and pain exist simultaneously.
The album’s newest single “Leeches” offers one final glimpse into the project's darker, more confrontational territory. Driven by abrasive industrial synths, glitching textures, and an unrelenting electronic pulse, the track examines the destructive patterns that emerge when emotional pain turns inward and outward. At its core, “Leeches” confronts the contradiction of wanting to be loved while simultaneously believing you deserve to be hated.
Each track becomes another confrontation with an identity that no longer feels authentic, shedding the expectations and assumptions imposed by others in pursuit of something more personal.
“It's 30 Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wounds to the Head, but there are 30 self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the versions of me that exist in other people's heads,” bodyimage tells Luna. “Every song should be a little bit closer to get me closer to who I truly am and clear the air on a lot of very real experiences.”
Leading the album is “SENTIMENTAL,” its focal track and a confrontational collision of goth and club music built for warehouse floors. Grinding basslines, punishing low-end stabs, and distorted vocals channel feminine rage into an overwhelming dance-floor experience. Both hypnotic and physically imposing, the track captures the tension at the heart of bodyimage's artistic identity.
“Surprise surprise, it's about to get a little dark,” bodyimage says of the project. “I started writing it with a simple idea: What would my art say if I was truly and completely honest? What if every song scared me? … I succeeded, every song scares the shit out of me, but life is too short to deliver anything less than brutal honesty.”
Across the album, bodyimage explores fetishism, the blurred boundaries between romance and perversion, substance abuse, escapism, falling in love in late-stage capitalism, and the dangerous situations that can emerge when survival no longer feels like a priority. Be warned. These experiences are not presented through a polished or romanticized lens.
Yet, beneath the album's abrasive production and confrontational subject matter is an underlying desire for connection. For bodyimage, music becomes a space to articulate the feelings and experiences that often remain unspoken, creating an opportunity for listeners to recognize pieces of themselves in even the most uncomfortable moments.
“I create to connect,” bodyimage says.
Across their work, bodyimage explores cycles of change and self-reinvention — the pain, joy and destruction involved in shedding old selves and creating new ones — transforming those experiences into a goth dance fever dream that invites listeners to feel deeply and move freely.
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
BODYIMAGE: I try to keep it as true to what's happening internally, and keep no separation between the internal and the external when creating music which is why I think that there are people who spot a lot of different influences when in reality it's just a train of thought. The whole reason I make music is to express things that maybe are a little more difficult to express than just words with something a little more intense, sometimes melancholic. Lifting that veil between the internal and the external is what I do it for.
LUNA: “Leeches” explores self-loathing, self-sabotage, and the destructive cycles that can emerge when emotional pain is directed outward. What was the initial idea or personal experience that inspired the song?
BODYIMAGE: I'm pretty forward and open about my own personal struggles with mental health, and it's very much written in a moment of a mental health crisis, and I had to retrack a lot of the vocals. It came out pretty intense, but what I feel like something so poetic came out of such a horrible moment of my life that it just made it to the record. The record being completely transparent, it seemed like the right thing to do. It actually was very difficult to even put out because I was like, oh god, I don't even want to listen to it again.
LUNA: “Leeches” is just a sneak peek into your debut album 30 Self Inflicted Gunshot Wounds to the Head. What does the project represent conceptually? What can listeners expect from you in this new era of music?
BODYIMAGE: I'm not from an entertainment background family-wise, and I think that there are a lot of confusing elements when you are someone who's a little bit offbeat for the people around you when you're growing up. I definitely personally put on a lot of different masks, a lot of different versions of myself that I thought were more palatable and were more socially accepted because I did have a hard time socially growing up. This is an attempt to shed those in a lot of ways. It's 30 Self Inflicted Gunshot Wounds to the Head but there are 30 self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the versions of me that exist in other people's heads. Every song should be a little bit closer to get closer to who I truly am and clear the air on a lot of very real experiences.
LUNA: You described the project by saying, “What would my art say if I was truly and completely honest? What if every song scared me?” What did you discover about yourself by pursuing that level of honesty throughout the album?
BODYIMAGE: I'm actually a lot happier of a person than I thought I was, which was very surprising for me. It turns out a lot of my internal strife was by keeping a lot of this stuff private, and by just even putting it down in the sonic world, I feel free.
LUNA: You mentioned that every song on the record scares you. Was there a certain track or moment that felt especially difficult to confront or reveal?
BODYIMAGE: There are definitely moments that scare me for different reasons, which will probably make more sense when the album comes out. There are songs where I talk about a political dread, which scares me for a lot of reasons. It's very brutally honest, and there are things that I'm sharing scary life or death experiences that I had in in in moments of my life where I didn't really care what happened to me, and it was easier to just not talk about those, but to realize that now everyone that I know is going to hear intimately from my side, the not tough side, the not pretending like I don't even care. That's very scary.
LUNA: How did the process of making your debut album differ from your previous releases? Did working toward a full-length project change the way you approached songwriting, production or your own artistic identity?
BODYIMAGE: I'll never do it any other way. I feel like previously making music has been very spur of the moment and it became whatever was going to be just based on whatever I had on hand, versus working with an idea, a concept, and the intention of it being listened to front to back was rewarding in ways that I didn't even know I had in me. I'll never do it any other way.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on 30 Self Inflicted Gunshot Wounds to the Head — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who bodyimage is right now?
BODYIMAGE: I listen to like fucking everything on this entire planet, which is why I think my stuff comes out so crazy. I actually think that Brutalismus 3000’s “rip avicii” really hit me because it had such intensely contemplative lyrics on top of such energetic beats and energetic production, and it really opened up a world where they can exist together. I saw them perform that live, and in the drop right after she's singing, “Pills that make me sleepy / Rest in peace, Avicii,” which is already just so sad. Instead of cutting to their own drop, they cut to an Avicii drop, which is a muse. I feel like Avicii is known as summer house. But in that context, it recontextualized what music can even be to me. I never would have expected them to play something like that. I was crying, dancing in the crowd, making new friends. It was just so beautiful.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
BODYIMAGE: It doesn't matter what you do right now as a femme-presenting person, or as a person born femme, you will face backlash. If you wear too much, you'll be a prude. If you wear too little, you'll be a slut. Just follow your heart. If you speak too loudly, you're going to be too loud. If you speak too quietly, you're going to be too quiet. But the thing is that once you are who you are, other people like me will recognize it and see you, and we can all come together to create a secret third thing where we all are just who we who we truly are, and fuck them all.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
BODYIMAGE: I am feeling great. We're going on tour. I've grown a lot since the last time I played shows, so I'm just really excited to meet all the new people. That's my favorite thing in the whole world. I'm a music maker and a music lover, but I'm also a music enjoyer. I love to get out there, dance, have fun, meet everyone and see who these faces are behind everything. For the rest of this year, I'm writing new music as I always am writing new music. I'm also trying my best to deliver something really special to do it all justice.
