The person behind Amnezia says they used to play protest songs on a regular acoustic guitar. They no longer do that at home because somebody on the other side of a wall might hear the words.
“I had to abandon my acoustic guitar completely because the atmosphere of fear and surveillance is so thick that even my neighbors could easily report me to the FSB if they heard protest lyrics through the walls.”
Amnezia asked us not to publish their real name, location, face or voice. There is no rehearsal room for us to visit or studio session to document. What we have instead is a series of songs published online and a long set of written answers about how they are made.
There is also something worth getting out of the way early: Amnezia use Suno.
For some IDIOTEQ readers, AI-generated instrumentation will be a problem in itself. We are not going to pretend otherwise. The lyrics, concepts, song structures and selection of the finished versions are Amnezia’s. The industrial, techno and metal instrumentation is generated with AI.
Amnezia describes this as a compromise rather than the way they originally wanted to make music.
“I use Suno AI out of sheer necessity for survival and security. In today’s Russia, writing, recording, or performing my songs openly and legally is literally a criminal offense that leads straight to prison.”
“The lyrics, the conceptual vision, the song structures, and the final track curation are entirely mine. I use AI to generate the heavy industrial-techno and metal instrumentation that I can no longer safely record in a physical studio.”
The process begins with the lyrics.
“I write the raw protest lyrics first, carefully structure them with markers for the AI, and then generate the heavy, aggressive soundscapes around my words.”
Amnezia says they resent having to work this way, although they do not reject the technology outright.
“It is a harsh compromise that I resent, but at the same time, it is a brilliant tactical tool for an isolated creator. Even if the risks disappeared tomorrow, I would respect this technology for what it allowed me to achieve when I was trapped in a corner.”
Asked whether anyone in the Russian underground has criticised that choice, Amnezia moves quickly from the technology itself to their view of the local scene.
“I don’t care about getting ‘shit’ from anyone in the underground here. Most of the scene has either fled, been silenced, or sold out to the state. I am doing this alone.”
That view is central to “The Sellout Rebel”. The song is aimed at musicians rather than only at the state.
Amnezia describes a split after 2022 between people who left Russia, people who disappeared further underground and musicians they call “tame rebels”, or “ручные бунтари”. In their account, these are former oppositional artists who now appear at state-backed festivals and on propaganda television while keeping some of the language and appearance of rebellion.
“This song is directly aimed at our own music scene, not just the state. Since 2022, the Russian alternative and punk scene split. Some left, some went deep underground, but some became ‘tame rebels’. These are musicians who used to sing about freedom, but now they perform at state-sponsored festivals, appear on propaganda TV channels, and pretend to be ‘edgy’ while taking money from the regime.”
“To me, this is the ultimate betrayal. A real punk cannot support an authoritarian regime, and a real punk must be explicitly against the war. This track is a middle finger to all the sellouts who glorify the system instead of fighting for freedom.”
This is Amnezia’s assessment of the Russian punk scene, not ours. It is also an extremely broad one.
“To be honest, I don’t see any real punk scene left in Russia today, regardless of whether we are talking about pro-government sellouts or those who chose emigration. I don’t see anyone doing what I do. Real punk means singing directly and aggressively against the war and against the regime, straight to the point, without hiding behind cheap metaphors or safe artistic allegories.”
The same political test shapes their view of Egor Letov and Grazhdanskaya oborona, whose legacy has also been taken up by Russian nationalist circles.
Amnezia does not see Letov as a straightforward protest icon. They point to his connections with Aleksandr Dugin and involvement with neo-Bolshevism in the 1990s.
“I have listened to Letov’s archival interviews, and the truth is he was a Russian imperialist himself. He had direct ties to Aleksandr Dugin, who is now Putin’s fascist ideologue and advisor, and Letov actively pushed for neo-Bolshevism in the 90s. Because of this, I refuse to view him as some untainted icon of Russian protest punk rock. The roots of today’s disaster were already there in his worldview.”
Amnezia goes considerably further when talking about pro-war people who claim that legacy. They call them “a real, physical danger” and say there is no room for dialogue with them, using language that includes forcible treatment and “physical neutralization”. Those are Amnezia’s words and position.
On a practical level, making and distributing the songs means avoiding Russian state-controlled platforms. Amnezia names VK specifically and describes a VPN as one of their basic working tools. YouTube is the main public outlet. Whether a song appears as a Short or a regular video is not especially important to them.
“The specific video format, whether it is Shorts or regular videos, doesn’t matter to me on a personal level. My only goal is to project my voice of protest by any means available. The main rule of survival for me is to completely avoid state-controlled Russian platforms like VK, which are fully monitored by the FSB. I use independent global tools to stay out of their web.”
That caution also carries into ordinary life.
“I am literally surviving in the middle of a crowd of brainwashed Z-fascists. I despise them, and everything they support is absolutely repulsive to me. Every single day is an exercise in operational silence. You keep your mouth shut at work, you filter every word you say out loud, and you treat your phone and your accounts like a potential clean-up scene.”
“Fear isn’t a dramatic event here anymore; it’s just the default background radiation of your life. It turns your art into something hyper-focused. You don’t have time for metaphors when you are surrounded by the enemy.”
Amnezia says their break with the country around them did not begin in 2022. They connect it to childhood, school, family and relatively late access to information outside official channels.
“Since my childhood, my pro-regime (‘vatnik’) relatives and the state school system were constantly trying to brainwash me. Growing up in the Russian provinces, you are trapped in an information bubble. I only started using the internet properly in 2014. Before that, you are completely at the mercy of state propaganda.”
“People outside Russia don’t realize that there is a massive amount of people here who genuinely believe that the free, open internet is just a ‘garbage dump’ of Western lies. They choose the blindness.”
Looking back, they say they wish they had left Russia much earlier.
“If I had the mind and the understanding 15 or 20 years ago that I have now, I would have emigrated from Russia without a second thought. But now, it feels too late. I am physically stuck here, trapped in this mud.”
Family history enters the songs most directly on “Blood and Rage”. Amnezia says their father’s side is Polish and that a great-grandfather was repressed under Stalin and deported from Poland to Siberia.
The song comes from their sense of having been cut off from that part of the family history.
“There is also a deep crisis of identity. On my father’s side, my ancestors are Polish. But I feel completely rootless. I was cut off from my heritage; I don’t even know the Polish language. I am stuck between a state I completely despise and a homeland I was never allowed to know. My music is the only place where I can scream out this isolation.”
The English translation supplied for “Blood and Rage” reads:
“The Russian Empire was killing my ancestors,
Red terror was erasing my kin!
But my blood remembers everything,
My genetic code is within me!
You wanted to make me Russian,
But I remembered everything!
I hate you, Russia,
You cause only one thing in me:
RAGE!
Stalin was killing my ancestors,
Putin continues his bloody path!
The Empire lives by death,
Russia has always been like this!”
Amnezia calls the track “deeply personal” and describes it as their “genetic memory speaking through hardcore punk”. That is their own description of what the song represents.
“Empire of Evil” is written in English and aimed at listeners outside Russia. The title reuses the phrase Ronald Reagan applied to the Soviet Union, this time from the perspective of somebody living inside Russia.
“When a Western politician says ‘Empire of Evil’ from the outside, it sounds like a geopolitical slogan. But when you are inside this machine, watching the aggressive propaganda, the militarization, and the destruction of free thought, the phrase takes on a terrifying, literal meaning.”
“I wrote this track in English intentionally. It is a message to the global underground community. I wanted to show that the monster hasn’t changed. The Soviet ghost has returned, and we are trapped inside it.”
Other songs are mainly written in Russian. Amnezia has been preparing English translations so people outside the country can understand the lyrics, with the text accompanying individual videos.
The question of who should listen to any of this becomes more complicated when Ukraine enters the conversation.
Amnezia repeatedly describes Russia’s invasion as a war, an act of aggression and a tragedy. They say they support a Ukrainian victory and want the Russian state in its current form to collapse.
“This is my direct message to people in Ukraine: I fully support Ukraine’s absolute victory over Russia, and I am for the complete collapse of this empire. There will never be peace or a normal life for anyone until this machine is dismantled.”
Some Ukrainians reject the idea of giving Russian artists international space at all while the war continues. We asked Amnezia what they would say to that, without asking them to convince anyone.
“They have every right to feel exactly that way. Full stop. I am not here to beg for a platform, nor am I going to tell them who they should or shouldn’t listen to while their cities are being bombed by the state I happen to be trapped in.”
“My music is my own war against this empire, not a tool to buy sympathy or forgiveness. If they choose to dismiss it based on my passport, I completely understand and respect their choice. This is not about sentimentality; it’s about facts.”
One passage required separate confirmation before we included it. Amnezia had written that their own survival should not be treated as a reason to spare the Russian state from military consequences. We asked whether they wanted the original wording published in full. They confirmed that they did.
“If it takes devastating strikes to stop this machine, let it happen. I am personally ready to die if that is the price for the total destruction of the ultimate evil called the Russian Federation. I refuse to let my survival be used as an excuse to prolong the existence of this monster. Total collapse of the empire is the only way forward.”
Amnezia remain anonymous. Their songs begin with written lyrics, the instrumentation is generated using AI, and the finished tracks are published online through the tools they still have access to.
“The internet is a battlefield, and digital tech is my camouflage.”
Editorial note: This feature is based on written answers submitted to IDIOTEQ in English. Amnezia provided the English versions of the lyrics and statements quoted in the article. The project’s instrumentation is generated using AI, including Suno. The views expressed throughout the piece belong to the artist and their publication does not imply endorsement by IDIOTEQ. At the artist’s request, identifying details have been withheld. The final version of the article was reviewed and approved by the artist prior to publication.
