South Wales metalcore outfit Virtue In Vain are back with the final instalment of their EP trilogy. Nothing Is All I Am drops on Friday, 23rd January, and promises to be a heavy one. The band have described the record as a journey through a fractured mind, rebuilding after the worst night of your life.
We caught up with vocalist Hywel Thomas to get the inside scoop on the release. Here is his exclusive track-by-track breakdown of the new EP.
“Split”
“Split”, from the start, was always meant to capture the feeling of a panic attack. From the beginning, the build-up was written to capture the overwhelming sensation of something coming over you; having no control over your heart racing, the chaos of why this is happening, and wondering how this can be over as soon as possible.
This song went through a few tweaks during the writing process to make sure that we got the impact and feeling of what it feels like from our perspective and experiences.
“Blood Eyes”
We had “Blood Eyes” in mind as a song title before we even started writing the EP. The vision for the song was always clear; it needed to feel fast and chaotic. It was written around the impact of the chorus and maintaining that tension throughout the song, building up to the breakdown as that release.
“Blood Eyes” is all about how overflowing anger spills over into uncontrolled thoughts and outbursts. It’s about the feeling that such a volatile emotion can control you and cause you to really lose yourself in the moment. The lyrics really had to reflect that feeling. The verses are more fast-paced to show that adrenaline-filled state of mind, telling a story of anguish and hate.
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“Between Reflection and Silence”
This song is about overthinking and catastrophising thoughts. For me personally (Hywel), this song is one that I deal with most days, so when writing it, it was important to make sure the music and lyrics captured exactly the feelings I had.
We started writing this track and were able to get the overall structure down fairly quickly. We spent a lot of time working on perfecting the riffs in each section, as well as the synth work to pull the song together. Lyrically, however, that took a little longer. I didn’t want to do the song any injustice as I wanted to try to capture how I feel. I went through five to eight different versions of the lyrics to this song. From rewriting the whole thing to changing verses, I felt it just did not reflect how it feels for me until the end.
This is the first time we have introduced singing into our music, performed by our guitarist, Mason. We wanted to add an extra layer to this song, and we feel that we have managed to capture everything in “Between Reflection and Silence”.
“Echoes”
“Echoes” is all based around the concept of a theatre performance for one. When I started writing lyrics for this, I wanted to tell a more visual story about how we reflect on moments in our lives.
For me, when we think back on those awkward or embarrassing moments or the mistakes we make and try to think of how we would change things, it’s all replaying those moments in time. I saw it as a stage show, the performance of these moments performed for one person: ourselves.
Throughout the song, I make reference in the lyrics to the stage and actions given to the performer on stage, how they are feeling and what they are doing, trying to capture the fear of performing this emotional moment and the pressure involved. On the musical side, the riffs have more groove and a different kind of feel as the song progresses. This song is a different way for us to approach writing by focusing more on melody and groove.
“The Wilt & I”
This song has been in our riff banks for a very long time. “The Wilt & I” is older than our two singles released before this EP, with its early concept being created during the pandemic. The core parts of the song have never changed since its inception. The female vocals and piano melody were the starting point, which inspired the rest of the track.
As the final song off the EP, it is the accumulation of everything before and the final song in the trilogy story we wanted to tell. The song is all about pessimism and depression and how you live your life with a bleak outlook. Although not a happy note to end on, we never wanted this to be a happy ending, so to speak. We wanted this to be a reflection of ourselves and how things are for us.
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Nothing Is All I Am is out on January 23rd.
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