The bødyWash. Origin Story
Part 2 of our bødyWash. interview
In Midnight Donuts #5, we got to talk with modern day nu metal band bødyWash., the Nashville-based duo with an eye for innovation. In part two of our bødyWash. interview, we’re digging deep into the band’s background and motivation.
Read part 1 of this interview here!
This article originally appeared in Midnight Donuts #6 from January 2025. Want to read the most recent edition of Midnight Donuts? You can do so here!
Midnight Donuts: I want to ask you guys about your musical background leading up to this. What instruments do you play? How did you get started playing music?
David Abbott: As a young lad I picked up some sticks—my dad used to play drums. So, I started playing drums at 13. At that point was in just a bunch of really not-so-great high school bands (as most of them are).
Then from there, pretty much got into playing drums at church and connecting with some punk bands and some small rock bands—small metal bands—that would do house shows. Did a couple of small tours doing, you know, basements and stuff.
So, pretty much ingrained in playing the local [middle Tennessee] scene for a very, very long time, in and out of several different bands. But the majority of all my playing is in rock and metal spaces.
I'm in another metal band right now [Via Sky], and then in this one with Mogli.
Mogli the Iceburg: We've been friends for—I don't even know how many years it's been like.
David Abbott: It's over a decade.
Mogli the Iceburg: Yeah, it's like a decade. So, I think one of the things with us is we've seen each other doing music, and then over the last couple of years, David would incorporate into playing drums for Mogli live.
But because we know each other so well, we've always kind of thought, “dang, we really want to do this type of music.” … I was leaning in this direction with some of the hyper rock stuff… So this is both of us just being like, “dude, why are we dancing around it? Let's just go for it.”
We've flirted with the idea of doing something like this for so long. We had that one band during COVID—What was it?
David Abbott: Cloud Genesis.
Mogli the Iceburg: I don't even know what it was, but it just didn't pan out. We couldn't flesh out and actually get real songs done.
And honestly, that's another big thing, though, for me. I've wanted to make music like this my entire life. … I had to grow into my voice. I had to grow into my role as a producer. Because, dude, making this type of music is hard, man.
I've always loved hip-hop; I always loved rock. But I made hip-hop first because I could do that, and I couldn't do the other stuff. … This type of music is just harder to make. It's more resource-intensive. … [We] could just outsource all these things, but we can't afford to spend $3000-5000 a song. So, to do this in a way where we're self-sustaining and we can continually do it is taking just an incredible amount of sweat equity and learning how to do things.
(I want to clarify that, too, that doesn't mean that I think that hip-hop is a lower form of art. I think the barrier to entry to making hip-hop is about as low as it could be. But the barrier to master hip-hop is just as high as anything else.)
Midnight Donuts: So, Mogli—I've been following your music since like… I think the first time I found out about it was the Drevmcvtchr album, because back when I first got on Spotify I was going through all the feature verses that MC Jin had done because I had learned about him from Rapzilla years before.
Anyway, I've been following your music for a long time, and obviously, this is very different. But at one point, you made this shift—after Tumultu—you shifted and made Sad People Make Dope Music 1.
This is a side note, but I remember you talking with Justin Sarachik on the Survival of the Artist podcast about having to go to the hospital from recording?
Mogli the Iceburg: Yeah! I literally screamed my guts out. [Laughs] I had an umbilical hernia, and I was recording an Underoath cover, and all that diaphragm pressure actually pushed some of my intestines and guts out through my muscles where the hernia was. I had to get surgery!
Midnight Donuts: But yeah, so I guess my point is like you've made you've gone into making more hardcore music… and then you did the “hyperrock” debut last year at Smoke!... Just talk about your journey into [that].
Mogli the Iceburg: I think one of the things for me is that I've always wanted to make a lot of different types of music. And you can obviously tell that if you go through my discography.
Really, part of the decision to just go full tilt with this [was] learning from what has worked with a lot of my close friends versus what hasn't worked for me. Once indie tribe. really started to get off the ground, all of a sudden there’s this tidal wave of new discovery that was pouring over to my pages.
And that's great, but what that also meant is that everybody that was coming to my profile was coming across it because of indie tribe. So, it's a subset of a subset. And because there's such a strong algorithmic association with me and [nobigdyl.], me and Jon [Keith], now me and Torey [D'Shaun], anything I would make Spotify was just categorizing as “Christian trap.”
So then from a pragmatic standpoint, it's like—I have no problem with Christian trap, I'm still making music with indie tribe. I love that. But if you go from somebody's profile and—let's say you're a fan of the song “Outside,” and then the next thing on the profile is some super angsty alternative [song] … or vice versa … you're like, ”I guess this guy's just all over the place. … I don't even want to go through this guy's discography because it's so all over the place.”
So, it's like we're really just trying to dial in on that and work with the algorithms on socials, on Spotify, instead of fighting it. … That's why there's no indie tribe features on bødyWash. stuff. We could get a lot of streams really quickly, but bødyWash. has to develop into something that can stand on its own merit.
Midnight Donuts: Would you say that the hyperrock debut set [at Smoke! 2023] was almost like a proto-bødyWash. set? Were you there, David?
David Abbott: Yeah!
Mogli the Iceburg: He was playing drums, yeah!
David Abbott: I think, yeah, the answer would be for sure “yes.” I mean, we just hadn't gotten to the commitment of actually writing specific songs for it.
I don't think we'd subconsciously tagged this project as our iteration of a nu metal project yet, but hyper rock is still very much there—like, if I'm going to put a second genre onto us… it'd probably be nu metal, hyperrock, and then maybe as a third, just “metal.”
It made more sense for us, just because this feels like the type of music that we should be making.
Mogli the Iceburg: Going off of that, too… I always like to think, ”could I be like the best in the world at this?” I love hip-hop; I'm always going to rap—I rap in bødyWash., I rap in indie tribe—but if I'm being honest with myself, I am not the type of person that could be the biggest rapper in the world.
The same thing with hyperpop and hyperrock. There's a lot culturally and personality -wise that, if you put us in some of those spaces, it's like, well, actually, no. I wouldn't ever be the type of personality to be a cutting-edge, culture-defining flag bearer of hyperpop. But both of us—we could do that for nu metal. You know what I'm saying? So, it's picking the right lane to where you are.
And the thing is, you never want to change who you are for your art. You really want to try to identify and make something that is authentic to where you're already at. And ultimately, people can sniff out when there's not harmony between those two things.
Midnight Donuts: So, if you release more solo music, where's that going to be?
Mogli the Iceburg: I mean, right now, bødyWash. is my solo focus.
We go through indie tribe album cycles, and then we do solo cycles. So, last year, L O W B L O W came out. This year—even though we still did Indie 500—this year [2024] wasn't a full indie tribe album cycle. Everybody's working on their solo stuff. … So, for me, I'm like, “well, this is a great time to try to get bødyWash. off the ground!”
I think now with Mogli, there is kind of a liberation to just have fun with that for what it is. … There's such a vibrant community within Christian hip-hop that I think that Mogli the Iceburg as a solo act is—I'm digging deep within Christian hip-hop. Then, rather than trying to break out of that and do the edgy alternative stuff under “Mogli,” it's like, “this is what bødyWash. is for.”
David Abbott: As someone who's seen Mogli go through the process of finding space for his art to land, I feel like I can kind of give a perspective that maybe a lot of people don't have. … Going forward, I'm assuming that … he's going to be able to deliver more now that he has this other side passion kind of settled. So you're going to get better products at both now. … He's going to be able to deliver on both fronts.
I'm excited to see the Mogli stuff now because … bødyWash. is taking more of the metal, hyperrock stuff. Now, when he finds a beat that he really wants to crush and go heavy on… he doesn't have to worry about trying to fit any alternative metal stuff into that.
Mogli the Iceburg: Right! Yeah, I think David put it in a great way. I feel very liberated on both ends.
Right now, I don't feel any pressure to release CHH stuff with Mogli for a while. indie tribe's got that covered. I do feel pressure to get this band off the ground.
We have a ton of music that we're still working on. So much of it right now is building a community that doesn't really exist yet for creatives like us and with the convictions that we have, with the aesthetics that we have.
Like, dude, the community in Christian hip-hop is crazy. People don't realize that it's one of the most powerful small, niche communities that exists in music. So—we know that there are people that would like to see something similar in metal and alternative music, [but] everything has to be built from the ground up.
And there's urgency to do that right now, because right now … the world is primed for, I think, music like this. But … things change very, very fast in music. So, we're trying to strike while the iron is hot.
Check out part 1 of this interview here, stay tuned for the interview audio dropping through the Midnight Donuts Bonus Batch, and listen to bødyWash.’s music here!
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