(Interview) Beyond Extinction: "We don't think the song is fully real until it's been played live."
There is something particularly unsettling and raw about discovering that the place you call home has a dark and macabre history. For Essex death metal four-piece Beyond Extinction, that history was not only an inspiration to grotesque songwriting, but provided the full foundation for their latest release. Following their debut album "Where They Gather", released a year ago almost to the day, the band return with "Three Swords", a four-track EP due to release on 23 October 2026.
Rather than looking outward for horror, the band have literally dug up the ground beneath their feet to provide their own rendition of some of the most disturbing chapters of Essex history; they are talking about witch trials, plague, violence and the brutality that is embedded in the area. But the record is not just the historical retelling of tales from the middle ages; Beyond Extinction go further to draw parallels with what is happening right now to real people, on the same soil that the band now live in. Musically, they go darker, lower, heavier and integrate a lot of slam, which just adds fuel to their already established identity as musicians. And with "Three Swords" expanding on the Essex lore that has shaped the band's storytelling, LATCH Magazine has caught up with vocalist Jasper and guitarist Jude to tell us all about writing the EP and finding inspiration in the darkness beneath familiar ground.
Let's start off with Essex Death. It seems like the tagline has become more than that for the band With Three Swords, turning the country's history into band lore. When did you realise there was enough material for you to write a record on it and plan an entire release about it?
Jasper: I've always had a real interest in local history. I'm well connected to Chelmsford, where I live, with the football club and things like that. So trying to create some level of connection to the place we're from with the music, I don't think it was too difficult, it was actually quite easy, to be honest with you.
The more you look into historical stuff, the more you realise that everything that's happened also happened to the people in the place that you were from. So whether it's actually directly just Essex or kind of living through the stories of that time. It's been super interesting just learning about all of it, really.
And then come Witchfinder and A Dark Sickness, which are both horrific stories for different reasons. Which came first, the lyrics/lore or the music?
Jasper: The lore and the lyrics I almost do in separation to the music. So Danny wrote the mass bulk for this EP and did that in a block, basically before I'd kind of even had time to put lyrics to melodies or anything like that. But there were a lot of times when I was sitting with Danny and I was going through the lyrics and writing them and working with them while listening to a lot of the recording stuff, and I think that really helped.
So it's definitely collaborative, but I think the lyrics and the story building, I definitely did that as almost like a personal project, you know, for months leading up to the recording process as well.
And how do you think those songs translate live?
Jasper: Yeah, we love them. They're great I mean, live side, what do you reckon? Because obviously, I think for you (Jude) you probably experienced the change in the live music a little bit harder.
Jude: Yeah, I feel like you can't fully gauge how good a new song is until you've played it. And I think feeling the power of the drums behind you and seeing people get into the groove of something. You can't get that from listening to a final mix . I don't think the song is fully real until it's been played live.
And following up from that. I've seen you a few times now, and one thing I always mention in my reviews and to people is that your shows are really energetic, and they completely transform from when it's, say, on Spotify. So when you write the album, do you think about moments live, 'Oh, I want to see the crowd do this,' or is this bit for the Circle pit? etc .
Jude: Yeah, I think when we write anything, we're always looking to do that. I think the old way we kind of used to write would be like, oh, let's just do this riff, and then let's just do this riff. But actually now we're like, Okay, where's the song going? What's the payoff? What are we building up to? Danny's so good at groove, and just being able to listen to it and it just pulls you along the whole way. You can tell when you think, 'Okay, I reckon people are going to be headbanging to this bit,' but to then see it and be like, 'Yeah, I was right.' It's kind of cool.
What are your favourite songs from the album, and why?
Jasper: Man, my favourite songs from Where They Gather. I really like the Mines because I think it's just all over the gaff. Like, it's just everywhere. I also really like Seven Spears as a song because in the writing process, it was one of the last ones that got done, and I didn't really care for it that much. I thought it was again, it's just an album track. Yet we put so much work into it. I was like, 'We're filling space with good material,' but it never took the forefront of my mind. But Seven Spheres, retrospectively, we play it live a lot, it goes really hard, and I enjoy that. And the content. That's really, really cool as well.
Jude: So for our album, I'd probably say I like Mansions Burning on Bleak Horizons. It's the first one that me and Danny wrote together. And I feel like in contrast to some of the other album songs, it's not formulaic, but it's like verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and breakdown. But sometimes that just creates the best kind of song. Other than that, I'd probably say something like Seven Spears again. That was my kind of moment of indulging my, like, frog.
Jasper: Weird, bouncy stuff.
This time the album is a bit slower, a bit lower in comparison to your previous ones, but there's still a lot of violence. If we can say that you've previously talked in interviews about layering the heaviest influences. What are the recipe ingredients? Did you have a specific goal for the musical direction in the album, or was it just a natural progression from the stuff you listen to lately?
Jude: So I think when Danny was writing a lot of the riffs, ever since we've been doing the album, he’s kind of been on a roll with writing. He didn't really stop and so by the time we came around to being like, okay, let's get a new EP going, it was kind of like, well, here you go. I've been writing some songs. And it was just clicking so well all the stuff that he was doing. I think the only one that we worked on, like, me and him, all of us together, was the Estuary.
We did that one in rehearsal space and it wasn't kind of like we started from square one right? We've got right up here. It's kind of like we've got this stuff floating around so let's see what we can do. And I think that's the kind of way we operate. We never just go, okay, let's have a month break it's like, no, keep writing and just keep working on ideas. Because eventually you come to develop something.
Jasper: You have to cook stuff over time as it's got to develop over a while. And I think both the album and the new EP we're doing, all of it, and the result is a continuous prodding at the same thing, I guess, but the more you do it, the better.
Are there any specific bands that influence the music this time?
Jasper: This time? I think I'm going to speak on behalf of Danny, who’s sat right there. So I might speak completely wrong. But Danny's a big North Lane fan, and he's, I think, always been a what I'd call progressive metal core fan. And I think there's a level of, like, pre in how you write a song that a lot of metalcore doesn't necessarily have. That the stuff that he likes does and I think that's carried over really well. I think the songs feel really deliberately written, so I like all that kind of stuff, I think from my side. Vocally, I've been listening to loads of slam, so the lows are very low on this ep.
I think the kind of general vocal tone is a bit deeper and nastier. And I think that's probably because of a lot of the Frog Mallet I've been listening to a lot recently. Stupid band. Great band or Orbital Gate. Vocally, man, it's a they're about Fallout, the video game Fallout. It's just a slam band about that, so that's been big for me. But then I think instrumentally and musically, there's a big pool of that too.
Jude: Every metal band in the modern era can draw their family tree back. And for me, I love Black Tongue so much, so when I try to write kind of bendy riffs, I try to go for something a bit kind of wobbly in a good way. Going back to the concept of the album because it's really interesting.
All of the releases so far have been more introspective and personal in the lyrics. This time you're digging deeper into history and horror. So do you feel it's harder to build lore and existing history or on your own terms? Because reality is harder to write than fiction.
Jasper: Yeah, I think it is. It's definitely different, and I think that's a primary thing of it. I wanted to have a bit more of that challenge of translating something from something that was real, when it's its own thing, into something that's got to be formatable and usable lyrics and musical concepts. I think also a big part for me is that there's so much of the story in real life. Like, how do you pick the key bits? Because when I'm making more and building worlds up and stuff, it's just sort of like I decide what's the important bit, and I decide where that sits, where what has the meaning. But actually, historically there's so much that follows.
So, I mean, the Black Death is a good example, like a dark sickness. That's what the lyrical theme is for that the Black Death is a nationwide thing and there have been multiple plagues in history, and it's not exclusive to that time as a pandemic, not long ago, but conceptually the idea of what happened, where we're from and that part of it – I just had to decide that was the important part. So you kind of just have to bite the bullet with a bit of it. Yeah, I've definitely enjoyed the difference.
Now that you've mentioned that, it actually leads perfectly into my next question. You mentioned how the Black Death matches the pandemic. Do you find that these concepts, like witch hunts and disease and plagues, mirror the world we currently live in?
Jasper: Yeah, massively. That was a really, really interesting part of what I pulled. Reading the Witchfinder's lyrics, it was Matthew Hopkins who did all this stuff, he went out and murdered everyone. He died when he was 27. So he did all this stuff when he was younger than me.
But all the ages of us in the band effectively had been around killing hundreds of thousands of people for all that time. And when you can conceptualise what he's talking about in the target groups, you see these people on the Internet, spam, all this shit, the anti-women stuff, the kind of pro, this weird masculine. I wouldn't even call it masculinity. It's kind of a hyper-violent male side of the Internet. It's exactly what they were doing back then. It's just fearmongering and a certain type of people doing it.
So that was really a natural comparative that I didn't have to look into. That just appeared there, I think it makes you slightly concerned weirdly, like it's out of my hands way about how humans are because, like you say, it's true.
Yeah, exactly, I was about to say, and how has your idea of Essex changed after writing this album?
Jasper: Yeah, this is a really important moment for us right now.
Because for me, I mean, I'm foreign. So for Essex, somebody mentioned it to me because I haven't been that much. It's like having the chav accent and the women and the makeup and tans. So I didn't really know about all of this history while I was reading everything about you guys. I thought, 'Oh, there's a lot of interesting stuff in that area. Now I've got a different perception of it.' So how has it changed for you?
Jasper: That is literally validation right there. Because that's why we wanted to do this, as people think of Joey Essex, fake tan, and Gemma Collins. Of all this sort of stuff, like financing expensive cars and driving them but there's a lot more going on.
There's loads going on, and I think also, as well, I don't know, it's not about what people's perceptions of a place are about what your experiences of it are. And ultimately this band came from Essex. We've all had our own different interactions and engagements with the county and all this sort of stuff. But ultimately if it wasn't for Essex, none of us would know each other or the crowd of it. Upper Carrots up Chelmsford.
So as I mentioned, I've seen you in a load of gigs, you’ve played with loads of bands. Brand of Sacrifice, To The Grave, Osiah, and now you've got the Salem Trials co-headline tour. After spending years watching other bands and absorbing everything they do, what have you decided to not integrate from what you see in other bands? Because it's very easy to say, 'Oh, we like what they do, and you do it, but what have you seen?' and you're like, 'Absolutely not.'
Jude: Yeah, so I would say on the whole in our scene because the scene in the UK is not enormous. There's a good chance that people kind of know each other a little bit.
Jasper: Or have heard of each other.
Jude: And your reputation carries pretty wide. Which is also, you know, why we've always made a conscious effort from the very start to just be nice people because, you know, we are kind. I think on the whole we play with pretty great bands, obviously, sometimes when you've got local openers and stuff or bands that come from somewhere else. I'd say the number one thing is to avoid being disorganised. That's a huge one for us. We're a very strict band when it comes to being on time. Having your stuff sorted out, not missing anything and just being on it. So that's definitely one I'd probably say. Actually, to be honest, that's the main one. I think 90% of being a good band with a good reputation is just.
Jasper: Not replying to your emails.
Jude: Replying to emails, and be on time for the sound check. Be nice to the sound engineer. Don't leave your stuff on stage. And then that's it and then the optional one is being talented.
Jasper: The thing is, too, it's like you say, what to say for other bands, but like, there are a lot of sound checks before Burner.
Jude: Sorry, we've sound-checked before Burner. We've made it.
Jasper: They've made it, guys. Would you look at that? I think that you're spot on, and I think that luckily there's not much to take away from bands that are bad because they don't really get much time around. People are quite good at sniffing out people that don't put the effort in. And I think that actually you end up not being around many people that, you know, have stuff to learn from. There's always stuff to learn from people. I think there's always loads of learning.
What about musically? Because a lot of the bands you tour with are very similar in sound. I know sounds, but other bands do where you're like, This is not for us.
Jasper: I don't know. Orchestra stuff. There's a lot of, like, violin sort of, the Lorna Shore kind of symphonic thing. That really passed me by. I was like an old Lorna Shore person as well. So by the time I got famous, it was kind of like the good stuff had already happened. But the way I see it is like, there are certain things that you have to kind of stay in your lane with. No clean singing. We're not clean singing genres. But like, if you do a certain genre, I get people in bands, like to shift and whatever, and that's great. But ultimately, if you start writing for a certain reason and you build stuff around that, that's got to stick there. I think that I'm not a big fan of bands that massively do sound switches. I think that's it. I think we're probably going to make low and slow music forever. That's kind of the goal. Luckily, we've got people that are quite good at it, so we're all right.
Okay, last question. I saw you about a year ago. I think it was with To The Grave. That was great. And since then, I've seen you progress into bigger rooms, and I've seen you in bigger magazines, and thanks to Jazmin, obviously.
Jude: Come on.
So your music is being recognised on top of everything. If I see you again in a year from now, fingers crossed, and I ask you exactly the same question. What would you hope to answer me?
Jasper: That's a great question.
Jude: Maybe a little tour of the continent.
Jasper: Europe.
Jude: I think Europe would be the one. I think either we have Europe locked in at a decent level or we have done it already. I think that's what we want to do. There have been enough conversations I've had with people where there are viable openings and everything with music. It's not like we're being offered loads of money to do it. Like you have to with Brexit. Exactly. You have to break everything to do it. But I think Europe's probably the next one. Ireland was great last time. The ferry to Europe is a third of the length of Ireland, so basically it's three times easier. That's what I see it as.
Or you can swim.
Jasper: Exactly. So get really good at swimming, swim to Europe and go on a tour in Europe. Those are our three goals.
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The music on Three Swords certainly leaves room for that process. With the down-tuned guitars and relentless death-metal foundation giving the historical subject matter an appropriately ugly weight, Beyond Extinction let the brutality of them dictate the atmosphere.
That makes Three Swords feel like a natural progression from Where They Gather. The debut established the band's appetite for heaviness; this EP gives that heaviness a more defined identity. Essex isn't simply where Beyond Extinction happen to be from, on this release, it becomes part of the mythology.
And perhaps that's what makes the concept work so well. History can feel distant when it's presented as dates, names and events in a textbook. But when you realise those events happened in the places you know, the stories become considerably more tangible. For Beyond Extinction, the Essex mud has plenty of stories left buried in it.
Interviewed by Charis Lydia Bagioki
Photos by Charis Lydia Bagioki
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