Associated card: Nine of Wands.
Associated albums: http://bit.ly/1Mx69iF,
http://bit.ly/1VQGgwn,
http://bit.ly/1oi3gqf,
http://bit.ly/1XZfmB5
Fortunately, Vargas survived, by the means of total lockdown, and, circa spring 2002, everyone in the school lost all the interest in them. Multiple personality disorder continued its course for further development though. At least two different personalities existed in the mind of Vargas already; apparently, one representing strength, friendship and collaboration, and another one representing love and passion. These two personalities, or basically “sides” or “projections”, could multiply further any moment. Vargas started to work on, as they thought at the moment, their most serious album, exploring all the damage they suffered with a little hope for the future.
A self-titled Remain album, the result of this work, existed in many versions, and the latest version was originally released in May 2002.
A new life started for Vargas then; no more school, since they got into a college program instead, and, generally, it was the time to heal. But, “the process” was already irreversible. Multiple personalities continued to develop and Vargas became quite unstable; apparently, different personalities sometimes tried to take over, and, social-wise, it caused many problems for Vargas. For instance, they used to contact people on behalf of their other personalities, and, in the end, staying away from Vargas was the only possible option for people they contacted. Therefore, later, Vargas went under relative lockdown again. Nearly all recordings made in 2002 and 2003 do not exist anymore; they were wiped by Vargas under an impulse or by decision of one of their personalities.
Digital Avenger “Digimetery” was possibly just another version of self-titled Remain album since the title of one of the tracks suggests this, but, one of the first completely lost recordings was
a demo recording by Blessed Hate, perhaps one of the most extreme recordings Vargas produced ever. A project ETM, the title of which means something very nasty in Russian, appeared to be a first experimental product of Vargas’ vision. Unfortunately,
ETM “Live at Hammer & Sickle”, a live recording of an experimental performance in Moscow, basically field recordings, is also missing completely.
As mentioned earlier, it was quite usual for Vargas to change project names very often, but one project name they started to use circa October 2002 became something that Vargas continued to stick with through years. According to Sands of Time,
Fatal Injection appeared first as a parody punk rock band featuring Vargas and Ilya “Silver_Fox” Kutsev; later Ilya left the band and the music style shifted away towards crossover between hardcore punk and so-called “Swedish death metal”. Then, in June 2003, the style shifted away again towards the intense hardcore crossover with electronic elements in the sound, and, in July 2003, Fatal Injection ceased to exist, for a while. All “parody punk era” and crossover recordings (2002-2003) are missing completely, namely,
“Salamo Stories / *******” (or “******”),
“Grizzly House”,
“Heads up the Wall” (or “Headbang”),
“Kill the President” (the recording where the music style shifted away),
“Social Decay”,
“Hatred”,
“Genocide”,
“Acid Poisoned Stories” (electronic elements were added to the aggressive hardcore crossover sound),
“Salamo Stories II”,
“Vol. II” (2xCD compilation of best works), and
“Salamo Stories / Final” (Q1 / Q2 2004). Most of these recordings sounded very raw, and lyrics on the recordings consisted of Russian swears directed at those who hurt Vargas most; apparently, the recordings were supposed to have some sort of therapeutic effect for Vargas. Due to relative lockdown, multiple personality disorder and social anxiety, everyone whom Vargas invited to participate in the projects eventually left or declined further collaboration, and Vargas tried to move on with one of their personalities instead, who were usually not credited anyhow on the recordings. Sometimes the real acquaintances of Vargas also created music in some way, like Ilya, who was playing bass in some rock band, but sometimes they were just hanging around, not contributing to the final sound anyhow at all, so this is a bit of a mystery why these people were credited on the recordings in the first place. But, it’s explainable, taking into account loneliness of Vargas in real life.
Nevertheless, Vargas continued experiments with sound and exploration of different genres of music.
A demo recording by Fatalis was an experiment with lo-fi ambient / drone doom genre, the recording was unfortunately wiped at some point.
Divided Mind “Doomsday” was a death / doom metal recording;
Slowly We Rot “Decapitated” was a death metal recording;
ETM “Just a Bulls***” was an unclassifiable experimental recording;
a self-titled ZX-M202 album was a harsh noise recording. All these recordings were wiped at some point too. Although, apparently, some recordings survived the wiping in some form;
Inflammator “The Wastelands”, originally released in October 2003, was a quite strange and curious recording. According to Sands of Time, Inflammator was an industrial metal project featuring Dmitry Zhuravlev, an ex-classmate of Vargas, who, nevertheless, kept some contact with them for quite some time. The name of the project was inspired by a title of the track by
Pitch Shifter. Possibly, few other versions of the recording exist. There is great diversity on the album; lo-fi electronic and industrial metal / grindcore tracks complement each other well and everything sounds very raw and quite brutal. Likely, many of the tracks appeared somewhere in some other forms before. For instance, “Decapitated” is possibly an industrial metal version of the track by Slowly We Rot. “Stand Alone” and “Carnival” look like very twisted cover versions of the tracks by
Iced Earth and
Project Pitchfork respectively.
Remain “Submit” was even more curious recording; possibly, this was just another version of Inflammator “The Wastelands”. The recording is missing, so there is no way of finding out that.
But, one of the most questionable recordings ever was
Slowly We Rot “Unplugged I-IV”. Apparently, the recording was reissued in July 2008 by Sands of Time (as “Unplugged”), but all the tracks sound exactly like instrumentals for Fatal Injection “Vol. III”, therefore this recording is being attributed to as
Fatal Injection “Vol. III (Instrumentals)”, released in July 2004. One omitted track sounds exactly like something from Fatal Injection’s “parody punk era”. It’s very likely that Sands of Time or Vargas (or both) made some sort of mistake when (re-)releasing this recording, because, officially, Fatal Injection “abandoned” rock sound for a while in 2004 until “Vol. III” (evidence of that existed on Fatal Injection “Exodus”), and, the recording is really anything but death metal, therefore it’s not Slowly We Rot. Perhaps, it was some earlier recording, or a later one, no one really knows. It’s really confusing. According to Sands of Time, Fatal Injection was reformed in 2004 as electro-industrial crossover band featuring Georgiy “Geo” Yaroslavtsev. Industrial elements indeed appeared on some tracks and, apparently, “Exodus” was the proof of that. It’s unclear whether “Geo” was a real person or not though. Apparently, Vargas played guitar quite well at the moment and could record anything without any technical problems. All guitar tracks were credited to “Geo”, but, taking into account the circumstances around the creation of “Vol. III”, it’s just not likely that anyone else could be allowed to work on this recording. So, “Geo” might be just one of Vargas’ personalities. It’s just very likely.
Speaking of
Fatal Injection “Vol. III”, slightly ahead of the chronology, the final version of this album was recorded circa November 2004. The album was inspired by a failed relationship of Vargas, therefore it’s unlikely that anyone else but Vargas could work on this recording, it was too personal stuff. Unfortunately, this version of the album is missing and only instrumentals survived, as explained above. Circa December 2004,
Fatal Injection “Exodus”, containing outtakes from the final version of “Vol. III” and some crossover material, was released as well, although, unfortunately, wiped at some point too.
According to the interview for Senile Dementia, the “tracker music era” continued for Vargas until 2004-2005, although, of course, not everything was made using trackers. In the interview Vargas said that most of the material they recorded between 1999 and 2005 was relatively good, but, quote, “quite naïve”. They tried to distribute their music on some local BBSes (until the BBS scene was completely dead in Russia) and, later, via the Internet. Apparently, no one at the moment was interested in their art, although there is some evidence saying otherwise. But then, because of relative lockdown and multiple personality disorder, perception of reality sometimes appeared to be quite distorted for Vargas. As mentioned earlier, everything could be wiped under an impulse or by decision of one of their personalities, even if working on music meant a life for Vargas. That’s why, most likely,
Teloah “Telocvovim”,
Teloah “Adveniat Infernus Part I”, and
a demo recording by Lukiftian, all experimental recordings, are missing.
Gorevenge “Divided Mind”, a melodic black / death metal recording featuring “Geo”, was unfortunately wiped too, although the material was very good! Only one track survived, “Descent”. The track made it to
a split release with Inflammator, released in October 2004. Speaking of splits,
a split release between Fatal Injection and Remain exists, or existed, since all tracks are missing except “Deceive Yourself” by Remain. The track can be found on the compilation
“Lost in Time I”.
Speaking of curiosities in the discography of Vargas a bit more,
a demo recording by Kobaia and
ETM “Salamo Stories / Unlimited”, branded as experimental recordings, could sound like rather interesting experiments, although there is no way of finding out that, since all tracks from these recordings are missing, but
zeuhl influences sound exciting indeed! Curiously as well, there is also no way of finding out if
a demo recording by Project Kronos actually existed. It was mentioned in the discography, but the status of the recording is unknown; although the track “Obsession 90” could come from that demo. This track was released on two compilations, “Lost in Time I” and
“Pattern Recognition Part One”.
To be continued…
CN LUNDQVIST / "The Legacy: 2002-2004" / March 2016