Body Prison Absolutely Annihilate with New Single, ‘Happy’

Happiness has never sounded so damn ferocious, and we are all about it. Melbourne’s Body Prison have unleashed their brand new single ‘Happy’ today. Their first new music following the release of their immense debut album Until Madness. Immediately captivating and crushing from the jump, ‘Happy’ is a four minute onslaught to the senses and we just know that all you heavy nerds are going to lose your minds over it.

Since their debut in 2022, Body Prison have quickly become a household name in the Australian heavy scene. The last 18 months has seen them support international acts such as Cattle Decapitation, Fallujah and Spite, as well as playing shows with the local talents The Gloom In The Corner, Starve, Graves, LUNE and many more. With 2024 quickly coming to a close, all signs point to Body Prison having a huge 2025 and to say we’re excited would be one hell of an understatement.

We were fortunate enough to link up with all around creative mastermind and Body Prison bassist Nicholas J VanVidler and get some insight into the creation of ‘Happy’ and what may or may not be on the cards for the Body Prison camp in the near future.

On the back of Until Madness and a tonne of live shows, how did your approach change when it came to working on new music? What was the aim?

After we released Until Madness we got to play a bunch more shows in larger sized rooms with even larger crowds and after playing a bunch of the material in these spaces we noticed what people were reacting to and how the music translates. This helped us fine-tune the next release to cater for more attention-grabbing moments without diluting or veering too far from the sound of Until Madness.

With a track like ‘Happy’ for instance, being played live for over a year now has given us the ability to massage it into a more "live focused" environment. In short, we wanted to make the next material more live-friendly so that anyone, even if they’re not familiar with the music, can feel the energy and get involved. Body Prison is a band that loves crowd participation.

What’s the theme behind ‘Happy’? Tell me the story.

‘Happy’ was written during a turbulent period of time for us. As a band we were all finding our footing (we started the band August 2022) and we were all dealing with a lot of personal things individually as well as navigating the delicate dance of being in a full-time band on a part-time schedule. The instrumental was written by Tom (Guitarist & Producer) around MAY 2023 and lyrics written a couple days later by singer Daniel.

The lyrics discuss themes of dependency, dealing with self-destructive tendencies and how the human mind can find comfort of this unsustainable behaviour.

Instrumentally ‘Happy’ is the audio equivalent of doing meth, have a listen for yourself and you’ll see what we mean.

What is 2025 looking like for Body Prison?

BUSY. We’re all very excited to see what will unfold in the next year for us a band. We have a lot of material in the works, big hopeful starry-eyed plans, more merch ideas and we are hungrier than ever to take this to the next level.

Make sure you’re following Body Prison on their socials to ensure you’re the first to know about new music, shows and merch. We can’t wait to see what they come out with next.

Interview by Nicholas Simonsen @blackechomusic

Follow Body Prison on socials and suss shows here

Stream 'Happy' here