5 facts about the Vermin EP

1. The cover art was shot in a farm in Colombia.

I'd had the word "Vermin" stuck in my mind for quite a while thinking it'd sound good for a song or some sort of project (never thought it'd evolve to a full EP though!). Climbing a water tank in my uncle's farm, I spotted some cool looking spider that would look cool for the gram. So it made it to the gram and I also stored it in my photography album.

Fast-forward 2 years and I'm working on putting this EP together and I'm scavenging said photography album looking for something that'd go along well with the vibe of the album and this and a couple other gems caught my eye. I singled this one out because I like the contrast between the black grimy background, the colorful greens and yellows and the dangerous animal lurking in the corner.

2. 2 different tunings are used in the EP.

The first 2 tracks, Land Of The Green Sun and Frail And Contorted, are in B standard whilst the last, Vermin, is in D standard.

I've never been a massive fan of drop tunings (however they do have their place and several unique advantages over standard tunings or even open tunings) therefore I've always composed in standard tunings. I geared up my B.C. Rich with .13 gauge strings starting from the second string up and the lowest string is some bass string I found so the logical thing was to tune all the way down to B standard! The problem with this was tuning my bass all the way down to B but I got it done for the sake of an awesome heavy sloppy sound. D standard for Vermin was a breeze though after working with such massive strings and such a low tuning!

3. The first 2 songs were composed entirely using a scale I "invented" in my first year of playing music.

I will go more in depth in a separate article on the intricacies of the scale and break it down in it's entirety but for now, all you need to know is that its a 9-note scale I scribbled out on a piece of paper with some fretboard drawings with some dots pointing out the notes of the scale I could use.

I was barely familiar with the major scale let alone it's modes yet I ventured off to experiment with some lesser known scales such as the Hungarian Minor scale (often used by Oli Herbert in his mind-blowingly melodic solos), Dominant Phrygian, and the Whole Tone scale because I wanted to try less "mainstream" and popular sounds. So I decided to make my own scale because I assumed that'd help me create "my own sound".

Fast forward 6 years or so and I rediscovered the piece of paper where I scribbled it out and decided to analyze it with the musical knowledge I have now. I made some chord charts and stuff and decided to try composing something with it and I found it works awesome for composing metal. After practicing composing some riffs and licks with the scale, I had a crack at composing a full song and thats when Frail and Contorted came about and The Land Of The Green Sun shortly after.

4. Vermin was post-surgery entertainment.

"I composed and recorded this beast a few days before my shoulder surgery so I'd have something to mix and master afterwards in my 2-3 weeks off school so I wouldn't bore to death."

5. I used a real bass this time...

In my last EP I didn't really have a bass so I played everything on my guitar through a clean channel and pitched the whole thing down a damn octave. This time I got a real bass and it sounds killer! Vermin, being the first song I composed from the EP, was the first song I composed using the bass and my first experiment with mixing the bass and I'm loving the tone.