Exclusive Interview: Beyond Extinction talk new single “Parasitic”, lockdown life and signing with Bandit!

The World of a band is often a vicious circle of striving to get ahead of the Wolf Pack, looking to maintain and build upon a fan base while creating new and interesting music and for Beyond Extinction, returning to work once again with Matt Williams at Soundlab studio (Collected, Hunting For Wolves) was the best option. He produced and recorded their new single “Parasitic” having previously done likewise with the bands brutally good “The Fatal Flaws Of Humankind“. So we caught up with vocalist Jasper Harmer about what’s been going on in their World…

It seems like only yesterday we were interviewing you for  “The Fatal Flaws Of Humankind” and here you are again just six months down the line! How much fun have you been having in the rehearsal space working on new material in the absence of being able to play shows? Do you feel like mental patients in straight jackets in an asylum at this point, itching to get back on stage? “The latter part of this question sums it up pretty well! The comfort of being able to use our regular practice space at our vocalists house wasn’t available for this single as we’ve been away at university, school and working. So it was tough to get things into place to be writing again, but through a lot of zoom and video call based work and a few in-person meets we’ve been able to get a new single out and start on new material. We’re dying to get back on stage but we’re very excited as there are lots – and I mean LOTS – of shows booked which we’ll be announcing when we can do”

Last time around we spoke about the success of single “God Complex” which dropped before the EP; Now the EP has surpassed 30k of Spotify streams in the first six months, you must be happy? Do those kinds of statistics open doors for you in terms of things like getting better support slots for bigger bands? “Its a never ending cycle really, you hit big milestones and you think ‘great, but we want more’ and that’s where the drive comes in. We’re obviously absolutely blown away by the response the EP got and we are incredibly grateful, but our main aim is to use it as a springboard to do even more, and hopefully keep the ball rolling in the direction its been going!”

Since we last spoke you’ve announced your signing to Bandit Music Management (Tyrants, NervEndings, Fangs, NO:IR) who are partnered with Unearthed Music; what made you choose them and how are you hoping they will help you expand your horizons? “Bandit have a fantastic roster of awesome bands which was the first thing that drew us in, so after we got in contact with them and spoke with Jake, our manager, we knew they’d be able to help grow us into the goals we’d planned as they had for many other bands. The main front for us is gigging, as having the management behind us has allowed us to get feet in at numerous places we’d not get into normally, and provides tons of opportunities”

We’ve described your lyrics as getting darker with each release and the new single “Parasitic” is no different; less electronics this time but a really juicy mid-tempo battering ram riff; it’s a bit different to your previous works. What would you say your biggest influences were outside of music? “Lyrically Parasitic is much more personal than our previous stuff which meant we wanted to create a song which suited that atmosphere. I think we became more aware as a band in writing this single as to how important creating an atmosphere is when writing heavy song and soundscapes and ambient tracks from other bands definitely pushed that idea to us”

When you are finally able to get back to playing live again, will there be any cuts from 2019’s “Retribution” EP in the set list? Which are your favourite cuts to play live and which have gone down the best? “We’ve changed our sound a lot but we’ve always said it would be pretty cool to do a bit of a throwback in a set sometime! At the moment we’re focussing on crafting our recent work into a full set performance and honing our act to offer more than just an audio experience for audiences”

Getting your magic eight ball at the ready, what can we expect next from Beyond Extinction? “There’s talk about new music between us and it’s very possible we’ll try to get another EP out this year which would be awesome, so we’ll be writing and demoing in the near future. We’ve got tons of live shows ready to be announced from summer all through to winter this year, alongside a really big announcement soon…keep your eyes peeled!”