"Specifically for You" Single by The Fly Trap Habits

The Fly Trap Habits just released their first new song in 2020 - Specifically for You! From their upcoming album titled El Sakuma Drop, the band drop this new mosh-enticing bop onto the world of 2020.

The band was nice enough to talk about the single, the album, and the pandemic.

JANLOR: Why did you choose to release a single album now?

SEAN: Looking at what's going on in the world right now, it IS crazy to think we'd still be pushing through with this. The band hadn't recorded any new material since our first record 2021 released back in 2017 haha. 4 years ain't so far but no one would've be able to guess we'd be struggling to get there in 2020. It's not prophetic at all just an insane coincidence. It's important to be sensitive to what's happening around us. We delayed the release of our single on Bandcamp for Route 196 because we initially planned to release it on the day that it shut down. That venue meant a lot to music lovers like ourselves and an entire community of gig-goers here in the Philippines. It just wouldn't have been right. Nonetheless, Vince and I are real eager to release the new Fly Trap music as planned. We began rehearsing for new Fly Trap at the beginning of this year with the addition of two new members: Jaime Gerodias on Guitar and Mike Tee on Bass. To me, they're some of the best at what they do, and we've been getting along fine. The band has great energy, and we're excited to show you the new stuff and all online! As made obvious with our Funko Pop! looking avatars. The intention is to get to play them live but we're having a lot of fun with all of it for now. The opening riff to Specifically for You sounds like a laugh at the apocalypse to me.

VINCE: The release ( Specifically for You) was “unplanned” in a sense. It began when I had an idea of creating a “cover” of (The) Last of Snow. I thought since we were already recording, might as well try recording Specifically for You. In the end, we think it's a good way of telling people “We’re back”. The band actually came from quite a long hiatus. Our former guitarist and bassist had many conflicts with their schedules, so we were forced to look for new members to fill in their shoes.

JANLOR: How was the pandemic changed the band's approach to songwriting and recording?

JAIME: Being isolated and away from everything kind of gave me time and freedom. It gave me time to improve on myself as a musician and time to find new influences that I could bring into the group. And through that, it also gave me freedom to re-think my parts from the last time we rehearsed together and I would just play along with the demos we’ve recorded and try to come up with better riffs or lines to fill up the gaps or just to make the song catchier. In a way, I think it [the pandemic] allowed us to play how we would have individually played the songs, allowing us to put our separate personalities into what we make.

MIKE: The band had already begun arranging and composing songs long before the lockdown began, so in terms of songwriting, it was more of refining what we already had. As for recording, we fortunately all have recording equipment so that’s getting us by in that department. We began with a backing track where the drums and bass could lay down the foundations.

SEAN: We're just so lucky to have rehearsed enough of the songs right before quarantine.

VINCE: The band’s approach to recording became “work from home” due to the pandemic. We actually already wrote the song before the quarantine. It was just a matter of recording the song. Fortunately, all of us have recording equipment, so all we had to do was record and upload our parts to a Google Drive. We took turns recording our parts and Bam (Jaime) was in charge of the mixing. The mixing went through many revisions. We wanted this to be perfect.

JANLOR: What can people expect from the new album?

MIKE: Expect the unexpected! Joke lang. We all have our own influences and styles we lean toward, so the album is definitely going to reflect that. On a more concrete level, expect some nice guitar work from Sean and Bam (Jaime) and some tight grooves from Vince and me. hehe

SEAN: Expect explosive stand-alone tracks. We did the conceptual album the first time around and that clearly wasn't us. It was more proto-Andy (Chlau) than anything. Now we're more focused and we want to give it to you song after song.

JAIME: From what I could say, just expect this new album to be loud and fun. I would definitely say that because when we were making these songs, we decided to not really take ourselves too seriously and just enjoy and go with whatever in those moments.

Grab a copy and listen below!