The Scapegoat chronology is very hard to pin down. But on the positive side, everything happened in 2004, there is no doubt about the year. This can be narrowed down further to between April 2004, at it’s earliest, and October 2004, at it’s latest, which itself may be a stretched out period.

By February of 2004, I had stopped working on The Slopin Fairy 7’s album “The Fairy“. I was still composing new material and playing The Slopin Fairy 7 songs, at least until March of 2004, but I was also looking to go under my own name (most likely as “Alex Julien”, but DJ Hack may have still been in use) and to start a new band. The 2003/2004 winter had been slowing me down with a depression that had me watching TLC channel’s house makeover shows all the time in my parent’s basement and beginning on February 2, 2004, I was going to night school in the South Edison ghetto. Velvet Revolver had also come out with “Slither” in May of 2004 and it sounded exactly like The Slopin Fairy 7 song “Everyone”, which I had written in early 2004. The likeliness really enraged me and I often joked with my friend Tom Nunziata that they had ripped me off.

A writing from my diary on February 1st 2004 says:

… I have no motivation at all. I just play guitar and watch TV all day. Speaking of instrument, TSFS doesn’t exist anymore. I went solo for a while but about a month ago I started another band. Me=guitar, Chris [Christian Scarlett]=guitar, Roman [Moyzman]=bass, Andy [Palladino]=keyboards, Tom [Nunziata]=vocals, Phelix [Feliks Khaykin?]=drums. Great stuff. We were gonna be a weird style. Rammstein mixed with Faith No More + Mr. Bungle. And to sick it up throw in some Mexican/Spanish riffs. Well let me tell you dude. It never fucking happened. I’m gonna call them and tell them that we should drop it. We’ll see what happens then.

After this dream band idea vanished, I also jammed with Mikey Bartz, who was greatly impressed by my playing skills and said that if he ever started a band that I would be in it. During this jam, I played for him The Slopin Fairy 7 song “Telephones are for Kids”, which would mean that I was still playing, or considering some of them as songs, at this point. In the spring of 2004 I started hanging out with an old middle school friend of mine again, Jon Plungis. Jon and I had met in 1999/2000 while we attended Woodrow Wilson Middle School together and were in the same French class. We also attended French club after school once a week, and he was incredibly good at making fun of other students, and I thought he was hilarious. I lost touch with Jon during the military school days but we were both invited to Andrew Palladino’s birthday party in early March of 2004 (his birthday is March 6th) and that’s how we started communicating again. There was a picture taken at Andy’s birthday party with him, Jon and myself where I had liberty spikes, but this picture has been lost. Jon started getting me into bands like Lamb of God, Throwdown, Eighteen Visions, Bleeding Through, It Dies Today, Killswitch Engage and Mushroomhead, who were all getting really big in 2003-2004. But I was still listening to a lot of System of a Down and Limp Bizkit on my own.

Jon and I decided to start a band together, by then it was probably April or May of 2004, and I started writing material that was completely apart from what was left over from The Slopin Fairy 7. I was then playing in Drop C tuning, mainly because I was learning how to play System of a Down songs. The earliest song that I wrote after The Slopin Fairy 7 was over was “Rage“. “Rage” was influenced by the System of a Down song “Spiders” and I also wrote lyrics for it in May of 2004 during science class, back in daytime public school J.P. Stevens (while we were relocated to an outside building, because I had carved some nasty stuff in one of the desks and my parents were forced into paying for the entire classroom to get fully renovated). I had also written lyrics for another song, “The Regret“, however due to lack of an official date when these were written, it’s hard to determine if it had been used or considered. Chances are however that Jon and I had put all our lyrics together in the same folder, which would have also included my lyrics for “The Great Cemetery” (which was planned to be our intro song, in the style of System of a Down’s “Dam”). Jon had written lyrics for three songs; “Worse Than Hell“, “Inhabitable” and “The Start of Salvation“, but as far as I can remember they were never used.

Jon had apparently sang in the choral when he was younger and that’s where the “singer” came from. He wasn’t very confident of himself though. Another of our song from this era was “Psycho”, which was mostly composed of riffs in the System of a Down song “Science” and took its name from another of their song by the same name. There was at least one or two more original songs composed, including one that was in the veins of System of a Down’s song “ATWA”. This particular song, which the title of escapes me and no recording of it has been found, was actually my favorite, of all my new songs. We of course covered System of a Down songs, including “Spiders”, “Aerials”, “ATWA” and “Dam”. System of a Down had also covered Pink Floyd’s “Goodbye Blue Sky” during their live sets and for this reason we decided to do another song from the same album, one that I always preferred, “Is There Anybody Out There?”. I remember printing out out the tablatures and sitting outside of my parents’ house on the back deck under the covered area on a summer day and learning to play it. Some rehearsals were recorded on tapes with my boombox, perhaps of just me, perhaps as a duo, and were given to Tom Nunziata. One tape in particular was listened to when he dropped me off at Nicole Coughlin ‘s house. Those tapes have yet to be recovered and are presumed lost.

System of a Down weren’t the only nu-metal band doing covers of “oldies”. I was very familiar with Limp Bizkit’s covers of George Michael’s “Faith” and The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes”. They also covered a multitude of songs live. KoЯn had done War’s “Lowrider” and had announced that they were recording a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”, Kittie had done Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell”, Mushroomhead had done Pink Floyd’s “Empty Spaces”, Orgy had done New Order’s “Blue Monday”, Deadsy had done Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” and Sebadoh’s “Brand New Love”, Marilyn Manson had done Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)” and Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”, Disturbed had done Tears for Fears’ “Shout”, Tommy Lee had done David Bowie’s “Fame”, Saliva had done The Pretenders’ “Message of Love”.

There were so many bands that I listened to during this period that had famously covered songs from the 70’s or 80’s. I felt like we needed to find a song that hadn’t been covered by a metal band yet and make it our own, just like Limp Bizkit had done with “Faith”. It sounded nothing like the original.

When I first started throwing around this idea, I asked Nicole Coughlin’s dad if he had any suggestions. He recommended I listen to The Cars’ self-titled album. I immediately fell in love with the entire album and considered several songs as possibilities to cover; “Good Times Roll”, “Just What I Needed”, “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight” and “Moving in Stereo”. The songs were heavily keyboard-driven and I think that I had planned to play all the keyboard parts on guitar, to really make the song sound different. Or maybe I had the intention of asking Andy Palladino to play keyboards. But I just wasn’t a good enough guitar player and these songs soon became more of a dream than a possibility.

Then one day while driving with Andy in his dad’s car, I brought up the subject once again. His dad suggested I check out The Kinks song “Lola”. This song also struck a soft spot for me and became the new option for the band’s cover. But I really don’t remember if I ever learned the whole thing, and I’m positive that Jon never sang it.

At this point it is unclear if we even had a name for the band or if we had even discussed what names we could use. I know that I wanted to use “Scapegoat” at one point and Andy Palladino used to say “Call it Rapegoat!”. But I don’t think Jon liked either names. It was summer but we were still going to school, now that I was back at J.P. Stevens High School in North Edison, because the summer vacation hadn’t started yet. We wanted our mutual friend (also from French class and French club) Andy Palladino to come in as a bassist (as I had also wanted him to play bass in The Slopin Fairy 7) but I believe that at the time he didn’t consider himself good enough and was starting to focus on keyboards. We didn’t even have a microphone. All we had was my guitar and my cheap Fender guitar amp. We found out that one of our J.P. Stevens High School friend, Andrew Brown, had an eBay account and asked him if he could order the microphone that we found, a Hisonics WHM-308 wireless, for about 20$. We obviously didn’t know about music stores, and even had we known, wouldn’t have had the money to get one there. I soon after placed orders for every Faith No More album on eBay through Andrew Brown. Jon and I were so damn excited when our first mic came. It had a wire and a wireless antenna! But we didn’t have a second amp for it or even a mic stand. We used to jam in my bedroom so my guitar wasn’t very loud anyway and Jon just held the unplugged mic in his hand.

That summer Jon and I took a bible that I had laying at home and went to Winter Street Park to burn it. It was quite a revealing time for us, when we in fact noted that nothing had happened to us and we were still alive and kicking. That event could have been what influenced Jon’s lyrics, as they all seemed a little religious. It was pretty bad at home for both of us. We hated our families and he used to sneak out of his house at night to come sleep over. We’d bunk outside in my backyard with sleeping bags and a memorable night was when we actually laid down on the pavement of a major street at three in the morning while there was no traffic at all, just listening to the crickets and street signal lights ticking away. That was our way of escaping.

I spent from July to late August of the summer 2004 in Montreal, Canada working for my grandmother, painting metal fences on balconies at the apartments she owned. The little money that I made was used to buy some guitar material and take Nicole out when she came to visit me for a week. I also went to La Ronde a lot with my cousin Phil and stayed at his place for several days. I purchased Pink Floyd and System of a Down posters at Club Video 2000, a video store located on Beaubien street behind where my grandmother lived. I also bought a Seiko chromatic tuner because I had recently learned about dropped tunings and my first tuner didn’t detect notes lower than half a step down. I also purchased tablature books for three Limp Bizkit albums; “Significant Other”, “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water” and “Results May Vary” as well as Metallica’s black album. That summer was my first time playing in straight C# for Limp Bizkit songs. An additional fact was that I got my first turntable while in Canada that summer. My grandmother was in the stage of selling her cottage and so renovated a few things. I went up to see it and was given the old 70’s turntable that was there. The turntable had an 8-track player and an AM radio on it as well. I got my father’s vinyl records out of a box in the basement or garage and brought them in my bedroom.

When I came back from Canada at the end of the summer, Jon and I continued hanging out but I believe that our music collaboration had faded out. I can’t remember if I was considering our band over or not but I never stopped writing new songs. During the late summer and early autumn of 2004 my song writing evolved to more metalcore styles and I was playing in Drop B, as I was learning how to play Limp Bizkit’s “Results May Vary” album, Eighteen Visions and Bleeding Through. I was also learning how to play Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”. This was also a time when I was learning to gallop and how to do plucked, tapped and pinched harmonics. The first of these new songs was “Nahanni”. The title “Nahanni” was originally reserved for a never-composed song on “The Fairy” album, titled after a river in northern Canada. I found the name while looking at a map in my room during February of 2004, liked it and decided to keep it for a song title. The song was finally composed during this period. “Rage” and “Psycho” were both carried over but were altered to be more metalcore by playing them in Drop B with more palm muting and added breakdowns at the end. The added breakdowns of those songs were directly influenced by Eighteen Vision’s song “Tower of Snakes”, which had just come out while I was in Canada. I was also working on a brand new song called “Ballad for a Goddess“, a song that was originally composed for Nicole Coughlin but later evolved and was completed for Brandi Hoke in 2005. The song evolved further and became “Vakker I Måneskinnet” when lyrics were composed about Dylan Seymour in 2006. I finally renamed the song “La Belle Sous La Lune” in 2006.

Perhaps the desire to get the band going with Jon again influenced my next purchase. I asked Andy Palladino if I could buy his bass and amp as he wasn’t using it anymore. Andy didn’t mind and initially agreed, but his parents found out about it and objected. They had a small music room that housed the bass, a piano, a keyboard and probably a few more instruments  and I think that they didn’t want to breakup the set. So I contacted another high school friend, Roman Moyzman, with whom I was supposed to start a band with back in February of 2004. Roman was a stoner and due to drugs, he had lost interest in playing music. I paid Roman 100$ for his Ibanez bass and amp and I was so happy when I brought it home that night. Jon may have borrowed the bass to learn the instrument, but my memory might be making this up. If he did, it wasn’t for very long. Another metalcore influence that came in September of 2004 was that I was learning how to flip my guitar around me. The first time that I attempted this was with the new bass, which I had named Bianca, in my parent’s backyard. But I never got to show off my skills because we never played a show. The fact that Jon was also becoming more interested in drugs than music didn’t help.

On my new bass amp, I had an audio output, which I quickly learned would allow me to control the gain from the sound that went into my computer if I wanted to record. I therefore recorded three or four songs in September of 2004 with this new technology: “Rage”, “Psycho” and “Nahanni”. It’s very likely that I also recorded “Ballad For A Goddess” at the same time, but deleted it from my computer once it was re-recorded in 2005 for Throne of Mortality. Somehow, they ended up erroneously associated under The Slopin Fairy 7. While I had previously announced that The Slopin Fairy was fully over, in my journal as well as on the band website, I suddenly posted these new recordings on the The Slopin Fairy 7 website. I also kept the MP3s in the same folder as The Slopin Fairy 7 demos.

Perhaps I didn’t realize that band names could be changed or that a person could use anything he wanted. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was still proposing the name “Scapegoat” in school knowing that Jon and I had never officially set a name to our band. But Scapegoat was probably the closest name to ever being used.

Perhaps the last musical thing Jon and I did together was going to the John P. Stevens High School Band Wars in early November of 2004. It was a very sad day for me because my girlfriend Nicole Coughlin had broken up with me the night before. I remember meeting up with Jon at Winter Street Park in the afternoon (would have been either a Friday or Saturday; November 5th or 6th, or 12th or 13th). I remember that I was depressed and mentioned in, to which Jon replied jokingly “What did your girlfriend dump you?”, or something of the kind. I responded that that was exactly what had happened and he felt terrible about it and apologized. Later on we got picked up by the usual crew, Casey, Pete, Frank and Rad, but I can’t remember if we all went to the school to watch the show. I’m not sure if the girls were there or not, Ally, Coleen, Lauren and Jacqui.

Could also be October 30th, and the next day, Nicole and I went trick or treating “as friends”.

At the show, I remember Alex Radustina was there and probably Andy Palladino. Jon was there for sure, probably Rad as well.

2004-11-?? John P. Stevens High School Fifth Annual Battle Of The Bands (Band Wars), John P. Stevens High School (Edison, NJ) Eiman Nejad (solo of The Star-Spangled Banner), No Answer (Blink-182 and Sugarcult covers), Losing Interest (ska band), Loomer (maybe band with Melanie Dinaburg on vocals), Mutiny, Midnight Media (Muse cover, Anupam’s band), Hammerhead, Mockina (Killswitch Engage’s The End Of Heartache cover), Nonetheless (Taking Back Sunday’s A Decade Under The Influence cover)
-Was the last week of October or first week of November. Had to be on a Friday or Saturday. I remember hanging out with Jon Plungis earlier in the afternoon, depressed over Nicole who had just left me the night before. Then at night we got picked up by the usual gang and went to see the show at school. Only 5 possible dates: October 30th, November 5th or 6th, or 12th or 13th. Would be early because I was in the hospital later that month.

The Scapegoat phase ended no more than a week later when I entered the hospital phase. When I came back from the hospitals in March of 2005, I had moved on from this songwriting style and the name “Scapegoat” was no longer one that I wanted to use. “Ballad for a Goddess” was the only song that I continued to play and I developed it as a dedication to my then-girlfriend, Brandi Hoke.

List of Scapegoat songs

• The Regret
• Intro: The Great Cemetery
• Rage
• Nahanni
• Psycho
• Ballad For A Goddess
• that other song that sounded like ATWA
• Worse Than Hell
• Inhabitable
• The Start Of Salvation

Scapegoat – September 2004 Demos (The Lost Recordings)