INTRODUCING: Beyond Extinction
We’ve all been there – that stage as teens where we discover our musical identity and then you get out to a show to see your favourite band and as you stand and watch, you think ‘I’m gonna start a band’. It’s a rite of passage for the music-obsessed but for 97% of the population, the band never goes beyond an adrenaline-fuelled pipe dream. Well for BEYOND EXTINCTION, that’s exactly how it happened.
“Originally it was me, Niall Ali [drums] and his brother just playing covers of old school metalcore songs in their summer house,” says frontman Jasper Harmer. “Then I went to KOKO in Camden to see ASKING ALEXANDRIA when I was about 14 or 15 – that was the real inspiration to start making music.” Over the years, Niall‘s brother dipped out of the practices but even at a young age, they were able to find like minded individuals from across Essex, drawn together by a shared love of downtempo deathcore.
“For BEYOND EXTINCTION – as we are today – BLACK TONGUE was the main inspiration. That’s the band that introduced us all to that slower area of really heavy deathcore. Generally speaking, we all have very different tastes but there are three or four bands we all converge on, like THE ACACIA STRAIN, THY ART IS MURDER and INGESTED – but BLACK TONGUE is probably still the main one.” It’s an influence that can still be heard to this day, and one that has served them well. As far back as their 2019 single Dunestrider and certainly their 2021 EP The Fatal Flaws Of Humankind, their brand of brutal deathcore has been infused with a blackened, wrought iron edge that obliterates everything it touches. Naturally, they drew plenty of attention with the noise they were making – enough to land a slot at the 2021 edition of Bloodstock Festival.
“That was crazy – the first day we were at Bloodstock was actually the day I got my A Level results,” guitarist Zack Scott recalls. “My mum called me and read them out but it just didn’t land at all. As soon as I put the phone down, I didn’t think about it again. I was about to play Bloodstock! It was two days of the most intense stress and pressure and we played our 30 minute set really fast because of the nerves, but it went well.”
Listening to their recorded output to date – and even listening to them today in this interview – it’s easy to forget just how young they are as a band and as individuals. The oldest member is still only 22, and they only put out their first body of work in the past two years. But as Zack explains, that youth works in their favour.
“I was just saying the other day how good it’s been that we were all good friends before this band really started to take off. We’ve all grown from the same point – which was coming from no history, no experience – and we’ve grown at the same rate as each other. So even after all this time, we are still playing at the same level as one another and that lets us grow and push ourselves and each other further.”
That level headed approach is carried through the band too and deftly applied to everything they countenance. From the realities of touring to their goals and ambitions, this isn’t a bunch of starry-eyed kids romanticising an unrealistic catapult to deathcore domination. “Obviously, it would be nice to release Nothing More Wretched and get millions of streams but that’s just not gonna happen, so we are trying to set more realistic expectations,” says Jasper. “When you sit on new material for so long – we’ve had this EP for the best part of a year – you can either expect too much or too little. But as long as we are getting praise from people that we respect and managing to keep the OG fans happy, that’s the main thing.”
The good news is that their new EP Nothing More Wretched (out March 17th) should easily surpass all of their realistic expectations. Five blistering tracks that showcase spectacular maturity and growth by way of pummelling riffs, punishing drums, thunderous bass and earth-shattering vocals. This is BEYOND EXTINCTION at their monstrous best; if their previous work turned heads, this ought to snap heads clean off with wicked force.
With a tour lined up across the UK to coincide with and celebrate the release, the guys are champing at the bit to hit the road again. “The last tour we did was brutal. It was freezing cold and we all got ill, but two and a half weeks after getting home, we all wanted to be back out there,” says Jasper. With headline dates lined up in London, Norwich and Hull, they’ll also be playing Manchester for the very first time, and a hometown show in Southend to mark the new release. “Online releases are great, but the live aspect is why we do this.”
And as if that wasn’t enough to cram into the first three months of the year, they’ve also just headlined Deadsoul Winterfest in Ipswich, and have a bunch of other plans for the year – though those are staying secret for now. What they can tell us though is that BEYOND EXTINCTION are here to stay. “Setting expectations is difficult for a band of our age, but from a creative point of view, there’s a lot of drive to keep trying new things. We want to release enough new music to keep the tours coming. That work ethic and mindset will fuel a lot of cool things.”
Honestly, the world may not be ready.
Nothing More Wretched is out now via self-release.
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