ABOUT BEYOND EXTINCTION: It’s not been an easy journey for the Essex based four-piece, with a long and difficult recovery for the band after losing founding member and lead guitarist Zach Scott in 2023 at just 20 years old. 2024 saw the childhood school friends put together a memorial show, titled Never Forget Your Own, a moniker Zach had tattooed on him, at London’s Underworld in celebration of a life well-lived. The stellar line-up of bands, of which Zach had been involved with in one form or another, consisted of headliners Osiah, Beyond Extinction, Godeater, Bitterwood, Existentialist, Dygora, Glower, and How Long You Been Driving. All proceeds were split and donated to three mental health and suicide prevention charities: Help Musicians, Young Minds, and Campaign Against Living Miserably. In the aftermath and through sheer determination, passion, and the addition of guitarist Danny Russel, who joins Jasper Harmer [vocals], Jude Bennett [guitars], and Niall Ali [drums], death metallers BEYOND EXTINCTION have risen to the challenge. After countless UK tours, festival appearances and two stellar EPs, The Fatal Flaws of Humankind [2021] and Nothing More Wretched [2023], their first full length arrives this autumn. “Danny didn’t just fill a space in the band, he set a new course for us,” confesses drummer Niall Ali. “His vision didn’t just complement ours, it expanded it, adding new colours to our music’s soundscape. You can feel his fingerprints in the icy tension of ‘Winter Sun’, his rhythmic intricacies are interwoven through the album’s atmosphere.” Danny Russel adds, “Before I joined the band officially, I had written ‘Winter Sun’ in full and presented it to the guys. They loved it so much it didn’t need revising. I am very happy to have later been involved in the remainder of the writing process.” Creating a visually compelling backdrop to their music is a constant element in BEYOND EXTINCTION’s song-writing, embossing their lyrics and ambient soundscapes with personal horrors and realisations. Dense and asphyxiatingly heavy, their music offers a hazed vision of pain and loss, introspection and anthropy, and hindsight and foresight into a world that was not built for us. Vocalist and lyricist Jasper Harmer talks about the process of bringing his dystopian but scarily familiar world to life: “My lyrics are the amalgamation of all the ills of our cities and urban living projected onto a bleak and damning story of our future. In some ways it is a grim and depressing prediction of our civilisation’s final destination. Truly, this city is the place where all my hate has come to live. Truly, I hope we never end up there.” BEYOND EXTINCTION are: Jasper Harmer – vocals Jude Bennett – guitars Danny Russel – guitars Niall Ali – drums |