Impaled Angel on 意識失調 // NIGHTMARE SPEEDRUN

EV: The title pairs the Japanese 意識失調 with the English NIGHTMARE SPEEDRUN. What does each half mean to you, and why did you put the two languages side by side?

Impaled Angel: I've been fascinated by anime, Japanese media and their aesthetics for quite some time. There's something about the combination of the two languages that I find visually appealing.

To me, 意識失調 evokes a sense of disorientation, like something in your consciousness isn't quite where it should be. NIGHTMARE SPEEDRUN, on the other hand, feels frantic, chaotic, almost like rushing through a bad dream.

I like playing with contrasts like that.

That being said, I take a lot of creative liberties. Not everything necessarily needs some grand explanation behind it. Sometimes something just feels right, and I tend to trust that feeling. 🙂

EV: Take us back to the moment this track started. Was it a sound, a lyric, a feeling or a specific night, and how did it grow from there into the finished song?

Impaled Angel: It was more of a feeling than anything else.

I wanted something eerie, hypnotic and fast-paced. Something that feels a little unsettling, but in a way that makes you want to keep listening.

The kind of thing you can put on, disconnect from everything around you and just completely lock in to.

I tend to gravitate towards certain atmospheres rather than specific genres. Sometimes I have a very clear idea of what I'm after, other times I just follow whatever feels interesting and see where it takes me.

There's something nice about not knowing exactly where you'll end up.

EV: Walk us through how the song was actually built: where you recorded it, what tools or setup you used, and which part took the most work to get right.

Impaled Angel: Well, I was uh… sitting in my computer chair, pajamas on, some Julmust nearby, a vibe and a vision. Haha.

Nothing particularly glamorous going on behind the scenes.

My setup is pretty homegrown. I work with a mixture of FL Studio, Audacity, modern technologies like artificial intelligence, and various custom-built tools. I enjoy experimenting with different methods of creation, and I'm not particularly attached to any one way of doing things.

For me, the most time-consuming part is usually getting the atmosphere just right. It's one thing to have an idea in your head, and another to get it to actually feel the way you imagined.

I tend to obsess over little details that probably nobody else would notice, but that's part of the fun, I suppose.

EV: How did the video for NIGHTMARE SPEEDRUN come together, from the visual concept to who you worked with to make it? Is there a moment from the shoot or edit that stuck with you?

Impaled Angel: Funnily enough, it started as a little experiment.

I was trying out some new video editing software and wanted to test a few things to a beat, so I grabbed some photos off my drive and started messing around.

One thing led to another, and suddenly I had something that felt like it belonged with the track.

There wasn't really some elaborate storyboard or production behind it. Just me experimenting with visuals, effects and whatever happened to look interesting at the time.

I quite like creating that way. Sometimes the most interesting things come out of doing something for no particular reason other than curiosity.

Happy little accidents, I guess. 🙂

EV: Where do you come from, both the place and the music you grew up around, and what was the first thing you heard that made you want to make your own?

Impaled Angel: I'm from Sweden, and I grew up heavily influenced by the 2010s internet music scene.

Veela, Monstercat, metalcore, emo bands, dubstep, EDM… a little bit of everything, really. That whole era of discovering strange corners of the internet and stumbling across music you'd never heard anything like before.

I don't think there was one particular song that made me want to create. It was more the feeling of discovering all these different sounds and realizing just how much you could do with music.

I actually tried making my own stuff in FL Studio when I was a kid, but I could never quite put together something I'd genuinely want to listen to myself.

That was quite a while ago now.

The desire to create never really went away, though. And with all the different creative technologies available nowadays, I've found myself exploring that curiosity again.

I suppose I'm still chasing the same feeling I had when discovering music back then. Only now I'm trying to create some of it myself.

EV: Where does the name Impaled Angel come from, and what does it say about the world you are trying to build with your music?

Impaled Angel: I've always found the contrast between beautiful and disturbing things fascinating.

An angel is traditionally something divine, pure, almost untouchable.

And then you have "impaled".

Something rather horrific happening to something that's supposed to represent the complete opposite.

There's something strangely beautiful, tragic and almost poetic about that imagery to me.

I like that contradiction. Things that feel familiar but somehow wrong, beautiful but unsettling, nostalgic yet slightly distorted.

I suppose that's a feeling I gravitate towards in my music as well.

But also… I just thought ImpaledAngel sounded neat. Haha.

EV: What is next for you after NIGHTMARE SPEEDRUN, whether that is new releases, shows or collaborations, and what are you most eager to try that you haven't done yet?

Impaled Angel: There are a few things happening behind the scenes.

I've been working on some collaborations, although I can't really share much about those just yet.

As for my solo projects, I've got some sweet things coming up.

The next one leans into a more dreamcore-inspired, nostalgic millennium-era atmosphere. That strange feeling of remembering something you've never actually experienced. Old internet aesthetics, distant memories, things that feel oddly familiar but you can't quite place.

I'm really interested in exploring those kinds of feelings through music.

I don't particularly want ImpaledAngel to be confined to one genre or sound. I'd rather let it evolve into whatever feels right at the time.

Where that eventually leads, I guess we'll find out. 🙂