Exclusive Interview: Beyond Extinction talk “The Fatal Flaws of Humankind”!

Essex Death Metallers Beyond Extinction are poised to huff, puff and blow the rooves off the venues you know and love with the touring that will come with their ear-splitting debut EP “The Fatal Flaws of Humankind” which dropped on 29th January 2021. Having spent hundreds of hours at the grindstone in their rehearsal and recording spaces working on their material, they dropped the bombshell that is “God Complex” as a single to get our attention first and having had the pleasure of the full release, we had a chat with the band about their World…

Having an average age of just 17, what do your friends and family think of you starting up a Death Metal band? Have you experienced any difficulties in lining up shows with some venues not allowing under 18’s in due to alcohol sales? “We got mixed responses for a while from parents, but that’s natural when you’re starting a band of a pretty unusual genre, over time they’ve been supportive and want us to enjoy it which is great. Venues are really tough for us, trying to get into the London circuit has been near impossible with under 18s in the band, so we face that issue a lot! We try to grab any chance we can be given to make up for the loss of opportunities elsewhere“

How did your Cancer Bats support slot come about? Did you feel blessed to be playing with such a big name and an international band or would you rather have been sharing a stage with a lesser known band with Death Metal or Deathcore prowess, like Rings of Saturn for example? “While we aren’t genre-matching with Cancer Bats they’re actually a hugely important band to us as a few of us are huge fans. We actually went to see them play at the same venue a year or so before we supported them! We got the slot as the venue posted online that they were going to look for potential local support bands and we got a huge amount of support on social media which ended up getting us the support slot, it was a surreal and very fun night, and we learned a lot too. All the guys in Cancer Bats were so nice to us. We’d love to support other more similar genre larger bands and we definitely think we’re ready, but we wouldn’t have changed the Cancer Bats show for the world!”

What has the reaction to pre-release single “God Complex” been like? Has it given you more confidence in the rest of the material and future writings? “Definitely, we had some expectations and targets for the first week and they were totally smashed. We’re both grateful and excited for the next releases and the EP itself, we’re hoping to build on this and keep the push going, and we want to start attracting some more long term fans“

The EP itself “The Fatal Flaws of Humankind” is both lyrically and conceptually deep and meaningful. What were your inspirations behind it lyrically? “More or less just being sick of a lot of things around us. I (Jasper Harmer, vocalist) did almost all of the lyrics and when writing I just found all of the topics were human-created problems, which then led me to build the lyrics around the problems we’ve created ad a species and society and these songs are a vent and release for my anger at these things“

There is an underpinning of programmed electronics creating dark and sinister sounds on the record. How did the ideas for them come about? Is that an aspect you’d like to develop into the next release? “Our awesome producer Matt Williams is the one to thank for those, he added them in and they really worked where they were added and it’s meant we’ll be looking into what more we can do with ambience and computer produced audio to bolster our songs“

Into the realms of fantasy; if you could have any guest appear on one of your tracks, who would you like to collaborate with? “We all have personal preferences but as a whole I’d say that Jason Cameron or Dani Winter-Bates of Bury Tomorrow would take the biscuit. They’re both absolutely insane at what they do and we love their band“

Where do you see yourselves in 5 years time? Ripping it up at Maryland Death Fest and rubbing shoulders with Death Metal Royalty or holding your own on the Ronnie James Dio stage at Bloodstock? “Bloodstock is a goal of ours for sure, in 5 years we want to be touring and taking more steps to making this our careers. There’s so many amazing places and festivals we want to be a part of one day, lets hope in five years we’ve ticked a few off!“