Cassandra Angheluta, the Montreal-based artist known as Apacalda, doesn’t make music that shies away from darkness. Instead, she runs toward it. Her debut album, There’s a Shadow in my Room and It Isn’t Mine is less a collection of songs and more a raw, soul-exposing ritual. “Our whole experiences and our childhood… we go through things and we accumulate these experiences that shape us,” she explains. “Sometimes somebody else’s experience who’s close to you deeply affects you and I feel like you carry these moments with you. And sometimes the shadows don’t belong to you.”
That idea of inherited pain and generational trauma passed like a whispered warning through bloodlines underpins much of her work. “Our cells or what make us up have been affected even before we’re born,” she continues. “And I think the message of this album is to really let those things out of your body and release them in hopes to change things for future generations.”
Her songs go deep. Not just into the recesses of her own psyche, but into the heavy, often unspoken realities that shape so many lives: rape, addiction, death, queerness, self-sabotage. But don’t mistake her vulnerability for fragility. Apacalda’s storytelling is resolute, messy, and wholly unapologetic.
“I’m really not about hiding things and brushing them under the rug,” she says. “And some people don’t like it. They don’t have the capacity to and that’s OK. But I’ve been ‘chosen’ clearly to do that.”
Empathy is something of a superpower for her. “I’ll go somewhere and strangers will tell me very deep personal things, traumatic things, and I’m like, why are they telling me this?” she says. “But that’s just what I gravitate to. I want to know someone for real. I don’t really care where you work. I want to know why you are the way you are.”
That same desire to understand lies at the heart of her music. The single “Darkness,” for instance, pairs glittering synths and drum machines with lyrics that sting. “Darkness for me is about fighting internally with yourself. A part of you that’s wanting to come to the surface or like an older version of you that’s fading away.” It’s a track, she says, about queerness, about outdated habits, about letting go of self-delusions. “Although the lyrics can be interpreted as me singing to someone, it’s actually an open letter to myself.”
The song’s striking video, directed by her long-time friend Dahlia Bertoldi, echoes this theme. “She’s gay also,” Apacalda says, “and when she listened to the song, she immediately saw this vision that felt really aligned with what I’m discovering within myself.” They leaned into fluidity, queerness, and self-exploration. “Gender is so fluid and on the spectrum. Why do we even need to explain this shit to people?” she asks, laughing but exasperated. “Part of me thinks I don’t feel queer enough to say that I’m queer.”
On “Fever Dream,” Apacalda collaborated with fellow Montreal artist Kandle. The song starts with a gut punch: “Someone died. Girl, why are you so sad?” Her reply? “Cause I’m alive. So, is that not enough?”
It’s the kind of line that sums up her lyrical approach: radically honest, a little bit devastating, and entirely human. “Sometimes I share things that I’m thinking or feeling and I’m like this is so lame and pathetic. I’m going to look insecure or cringe… what I’ve discovered is it’s so empowering. There are all these ugly parts of me, and here I am.”
The urge to control, she says, is one she’s slowly learning to release. “Even if somebody says this is what is gonna happen, it’s not guaranteed. You cannot control everything or anything for that matter. So stop lying to yourself and just surrender and roll with it.”
Therapy has played a role, sure. But so has her support system. “I have an incredible friend group,” she says. “We’ve processed a lot together. I feel real lucky about the people that surround me.”
Not all her songs are autobiographical, though many of them feel like they could be. “Dead Weight,” for instance, centres around someone close to her. “It’s this person who was traumatized and then turned to substance abuse,” she says. “And then you’re kind of watching this person commit a slow suicide and you cannot help them.”
“Almost Burnt the House Down” leans into haunting synth textures that feel reminiscent of the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange — a film she says she was obsessed with as a teenager. But she isn’t always aware of her references until someone points them out. “Maybe subconsciously,” she shrugs.
She doesn’t write her music with an audience in mind. “I never write for an audience. I don’t. I can’t,” she says. “You want people to like your art. At the same time, you won’t like it if you’re doing it for them. So what’s more important?”
In her view, mainstream pop is about formula, not feeling. “There are formulas. And it’s a product,” she says. “That’s why I hope my music can touch a lot of people because it is relatable, but it’s also true experiences.”
That tension — between exposing vulnerability and offering connection — is what makes her work resonate. “What I hope to create is this sense of like community of we’re all humans, we’ve all gone through these awful things and we can talk about it and let go of these things that we’re carrying in secret because we don’t want to look weak or fucked up. And we actually are all weak and fucked up.”
And that, in essence, is the truth Apacalda keeps circling back to: that we’re never going to be the same after grief, or trauma, or heartbreak — but we can still make something beautiful out of it.
There’s a Shadow In My Room And It Isn’t Mine is released on June 13th
Apacalda will play an album release show at L’Escogriffe on June 6
Interview – Annette Aghazarian
Photos – Annette Aghazarian, Ryan Rumpel and Suzie King
