At Ladyland Festival last summer, where seemingly every queer in New York’s five boroughs (and a plus-one) assembled under the Kosciuszko Bridge to party on a sweltering summer night, one name was repeatedly uttered with gay urgency: Cobrah. “You can take my spot, Cobrah is about to perform,” the person ahead of me in the drink line said with a molly-fueled pep in their step. A few weeks later my very first ex-girlfriend DM’d me after I let slip that I’d be doing this interview: “I have never been so jealous in my life.” 

After a quick phone conversation that covered everything from dog farts to sleep paralysis demons, I concur. Swedish-born Cobrah is indeed sensational. Though her Ladyland performance was phenomenal—even from my 4-blocks away POV, I felt Cobrah’s hit single “GOOD PUSS” rattle through my sternum—Cobrah’s upcoming tour of her latest EP, SUCCUBUS, is set up to be something entirely different since, not only is she the headlining act, but she also curated the visuals herself and created enough merch to “open an actual shop with all the fun things” she designed.

SAVANNAH SOBREVILLA: Hey, Cobrah! Where am I finding you?

COBRAH: Hey! Nice to meet you. I’m in LA right now at a cafe trying to get some breakfast before I go to the studio.

SS: What’re you working on in the studio?

C: I think new music. It’s closer to a date with producers, seeing which ones you like, if you vibe—nothing concrete, just generally hanging out.

SS: It’s a very trusting relationship a musician has with a producer.

C: Yeah, it’s like making friends or any other relationship. You have to vibe to make good music, you have to enjoy it.

SS: I was actually listening to SUCCUBUS today…

C: Oh, nice!

SS: I thought it varied so much per track. There was some dancing, like booty-shaking tracks, and there was this one in there called “FEMININE ENERGY” which did make me want to dance, but it mostly made me want to take a martial arts class and beat up a boy or something. 

C: Oh, wonderful. That’s the point, that’s perfect.

SS: I’m curious to know how you fell into this succubus fascination.

C: I was making music and as we were finishing it, we were in the demo stage, I felt like there was this kind of aggressive power to it. Especially with “FEMININE ENERGY” and “ACTIVATE” and “BAD POSITION “ or  “SUCK”. I feel like all of them have a point of view more than just being really fun and good music, but it’s [still] super sexual. I really like to use [sexuality] because I think it’s really beautiful and strong, but I’ve always wanted to avoid being a sexy girl or a beautiful woman [just] for the sake of being beautiful. I always want it to have the texture of being a little bit disgusting or a little bit aggressive. Something that is not as easy on the eyes as just being beautiful. If you don’t give it an extra dimension, it falls really flat, I think. The whole core of the succubus is that it’s a demon that attacks people through sex. Which is really cool.

SS: Cool how?

C: At the beginning, they weren’t beautiful. They were just really ugly demons that would prey on men while they were sleeping and eat them alive or eat parts of their souls or steal semen from them and impregnate human women so they could give birth to more demons.

SS: Oh my god. Sneaky.

C: I became fascinated with it because it felt like a part of me. The way I use sex is a form of attack, it’s a form of power, and willingness to dominate rather than being just a form of beauty. Like you said, throughout the tracks, you feel like you wanna beat up someone while looking really hot. And that’s why it’s called SUCCUBUS, it really emphasizes the lore of the demon.

SS: Yes, it felt empowering in a mean girl way.

C: Yes. [Laughs.]

SS: I saw that there were different succubi characters that you created. There was a clit sucker one and… tell me more about that.

C: I really like the visual aspect of making music as much as the making of the music itself, I feel like they carry equal weight in the way I want to release the music. I enjoy being an artist who has equal focus on both parts—and the performance—they all go together. There are different versions of the succubus in different cultures, but the folklore is usually about women luring men to do different things. We wanted each track to be a version of a succubi. So for the seven tracks that are in the album, we did seven looks in total. One has fish hooks, so she’s from the sea. One has tentacles, so she’s an octopus. We made playing cards for each monster and they all have a backstory; where they’re from, their favorite fashion brands. We matched them up to each track, so they’re an embodiment of the songs as well. Seven different tracks, seven different succubi, seven different stories.

SS: What is the motivation for a succubus to do what she does?

C: I think that’s just their nature. They were made up by humans, right? It’s folklore, it’s not real, obviously. But I heard that they came from—not sleep deprivation, but…

SS: Sleep paralysis?

C: Yes! And so people believe nowadays that [the folklore] came from sleep paralysis because it could make you hallucinate and feel like there’s this heavy weight on your chest like someone’s sitting on top of you. I think it just came as a way to explain human behavior. Also, lore back in the day was really based on fear. Explanations for things that were hard to explain. That’s why in the main cover I’m naked, but I’m not looking at you, I’m leaning over someone I’m about to attack. 

SS: Yes, you look like you’re about to pounce. It’s so funny to think that back in the day, it was probably much easier for men to blame a fictional demon woman than to be accountable for certain things.

C: There were other succubi—or other female forms—whose purpose was to go into a woman’s womb and kill the baby. They’d be used to explain a miscarriage or something like that. But usually, all the lore about females is really mean.

SS: How much of the album’s visuals and themes are going into your upcoming tour?

C: It’s been very important to me that the tour is an extension of SUCCUBUS, so I’ve been very strict when it comes to color scheme. For example, as a lot of live shows are very colorful, I told the lighting designer that we’re only doing white and chromatic as that’s the theme and my personal preference. We also built this huge cross to accentuate the more dominating songs like “ACTIVATE” and “SUCK” with a lit-up platform that makes the show so sick.

SS: How does this tour differ from others you’ve done in the past?

C: It’s the first time I’m going on tour with a full crew and production. The other tours I’ve done before were [tied to] my debut and more indie. With this one I really got the opportunity to dream big and go hard… even the merch has expanded so much. I feel like I could open an actual shop with all the fun things I’ve designed.

SS: That’s wild. Listening to your tracks, I heard different sounds like leather and rippling latex, what other sounds did you use in the music?

C: We used a dog fart.

SS: Oh my god. That’s amazing. Whose dog?

C: One of the producer’s dogs, he was farting and wagging his tail at the same time. It had a helicopter effect, so they sampled it and it ended up sounding really cool. [Laughs.] But that was just one sound. I wanted different sounds like the sound of stretching tape and, you’re right, rubber and texture. All of the sounds that come with what I like to do aesthetically, I like to tie into the music. I’m really obsessed with using textures in music rather than big pads or chords or melodies. I’m very particular about it coming from a stone or a pan or tape, all those things matter.

SS: It’s like the music of our everyday lives, depending on the kind of life you live. I read somewhere that when you tried on a latex catsuit for the first time, you said it felt like falling in love for the first time. How would you describe the world pre and post catsuit?

C: I think before that I was probably searching for something that I was drawn to by trying out different clothes and different photographers. At that time, I was also finding the music. I had already written one or two songs that ended up in the first EP I released. But I found this passion in latex that I hadn’t found in anything else before. As soon as I tried it on, there was this thrill of doing something you’re not really supposed to [be doing], you know? Like doing something a bit secret, a bit bad, but not dirty. There was the thrill of doing that and then there was this sensation of looking at oneself in the mirror and being like, “I’m a new person, this feels like a second skin. This is a second skin.” I still get that feeling every time I go on stage. Once the latex is on, I feel I transform into Cobrah.

SS: And how is Cobrah different from you ordinarily?

C: I think Cobrah is me. I get really annoyed when people want to make it a big difference. Everything you do as a person, you do as an artist. But I think Cobrah is me, it’s all the things that I do. It’s the music, it’s the thoughts, it’s the clothing, it’s the hyper, truer, more condensed form of the things I really love to do. It’s all the joy in my life condensed.