After 17 years of searching, 'the mysterious song on the Internet', used by the esoteric Doom mod MyHouse.wad has been discovered.

The "most mysterious song on the Internet" -- so called because it was, er, mysterious -- is no longer a secret. The song, which is now reportedly known as Subways Of the Mind, by FEX, was a backrooms secret. It was used across the internet because of its enigmatic quality.

It was so enigmatic that a Rolling Stone article was written about it, claiming that a German named "Darius S." had recorded it in the '80s, from a Norddeutscher Rundfunk radio program called Musik fur Young People (Music for Young People). He told magazine in 2019 that it was one of the many songs he recorded, and he didn't know who sang it. "I don't think I heard an announcement." Maybe I heard the announcement partially and missed out on the artist's identity. "Everything is possible."

In 2007, his sister, compelled by curiosity, posted a clip on the internet. It remained there for a decade-and-a-half. Then in 2019, it went viral, sparking a voracious search for any information.

It's cryptic nature and the fact that it is a banger saw it used in many liminal space-adjacent works, including the DOOM mod MyHouse.wad. You can find it playing in the open doorway of a lonely vehicle, several layers into the inception style madness that plagues this mod. Anything else I say would be a spoiler, so I will keep my mouth shut.

It looks like the search is over (as reported by 404media). TheMysteriousSong subreddit used Horfest, a music contest in Hamburg that features local musicians whose work is then played on NDR. This helped them compile a list of possible attendees for their 1984 show. The group's members would then take deep dives aimed at the featured bands. One of these dives yielded gold.

"About two week ago, I came across a newspaper article in the Nordwest Zeitung archives, while researching Horfest band," writes user marijn1412. "The article was about a Kiel-based band called FEX, who won a Bremen talent contest in Sep 1984. Their music was described as Rock, with Wave and Pop influences.

"It also listed their members and I recognized one of them from a Horfest 1983 band called Phret. I was able to contact him and ask him if he had any old material from these bands. He sent me some songs he had made with FEX, Phret and a few others. One of them was called Subways Of Your Mind. It's a slightly altered version of the one we are familiar with." You can listen to this version here.

Michael Haedrich (former FEX keyboardist) is now a Silk Vision member. He also confirmed this under a YouTube video of one of Silk Vision’s songs. "This is Michael, from Silk Vision. In the 1980s, I was a band FEX member in northern Germany. Few days ago, I learned that the song we recorded in 1983 with the Band is the "most mysterious song" on the internet. I was completely surprised by this because I had no idea about the phenomenon. I immediately contacted all the original members of the band and we were shocked that this was happening. We are now busy solving the mystery, and we decided that we would re-unite in order to record the song.

Marijn1412, who confirmed the desire to get the group back together, said: "I got word from them just now that they are planning to re-record this track."

In May, the Backrooms picture's origin was discovered. The cryptic song "Everyone Knows That", also known by the pseudonym, was discovered to be "Ulterior motives" (which, er, was used in a porn movie 6 years later). While I am proud of these internet detectives, I cannot help but sigh with wistfulness at the thought that one day there may be no mysteries to solve from decades ago. These archaeologists are connecting bits of information that predate the information age, which means that surprises are in limited supply. Even if FEX claims that the sun will "never shine", there's nothing new.