Beyond Extinction: Building Cathedrals of Dread

Beyond Extinction - Photo

Inside the making of a debut album forged in grief, resilience, and urban nightmares

Interview/Article by Steve Harrison

There’s a certain paradox to heaviness. The more crushing the music, the more cathartic its release can feel. For Beyond Extinction, an Essex death-metal band who have been slowly carving their name into the UK underground, heaviness isn’t just a sonic choice—it’s survival. After years of silence, scattered singles, and the kind of personal loss that would have ended lesser bands, their debut album Where They Gather finally arrives on September 26th. It is not just a record. It is a reckoning.

“We don’t just throw music out because we can,” says guitarist Jude Bennett, his tone steady but deliberate. “Every release has to mean something. This one had to be the most layered, oppressive, crushing sound we’ve ever made. We wanted it to feel like dread itself.”

That determination explains the silence between major releases. Their last substantial work, the EP Nothing More Wretched, landed back in 2021. The years that followed were turbulent. The band experimented with stripped-back singles, navigated adulthood pressures, and endured the sudden death of founding guitarist Zach Scott. “It’s been blood, sweat and tears,” Jude admits. “Danny \[Russell], who stepped in after Zach, was instrumental in finishing the album. But Zach’s riffs are all over this record. Writing with him one last time—posthumously—was emotional but also grounding. It kept us going.”

London, the City of Shadows

If Jude’s task was to construct the cathedrals of sound, vocalist Jasper was responsible for filling them with nightmares. His lyrics weave a narrative born of urban alienation, political anger, and the suffocating rhythms of modern life.

“I spent a lot of time in London for work,” Jasper says. “Late nights, tube journeys, interacting with poverty close-up. It gave me a hyperbolic vision of a city that eats people alive. Not just London, but cities everywhere that strip away humanity. London planted the seeds for this evil place in my head, and that became the world of the album.”

He’s quick to clarify: this isn’t nihilism as a lifestyle, but nihilism as a lens. “I don’t live my life that way—it’d be depressing. But using it as a perspective gives me something to process all the chaos with. Some people play football to release stress. I write through nihilism.”

That lens produced lyrics like the searing line in Mansions Burning on Bleak Horizons:

‘Bombed out, my own fires go dead again while the mansions on horizons lit.’

“It’s the story of humanity,” Jude explains. “The cycle of suffering—where one group always has more while others starve beneath them. We wanted to write about what it feels like to live under that boot.”

Beyond Extinction

Sculpting Dread, One Groove at a Time

If Jasper builds the imagery, Jude builds the architecture. And he doesn’t think in riffs—he thinks in grooves. “Every section has to lock in with the drums, to create the punch where it needs to land. We ask: how’s this going to hit live? Where’s the headbang moment? When do we subvert expectation? That’s where the heaviness comes from.”

The process was brutal. Beyond Extinction wrote three times as much material as what made it onto ‘Where They Gather’, then scrapped two-thirds. “We’re ruthless,” Jude admits. “If three people like a song and one doesn’t, we bin it. Only the best survives.”

That relentless pruning gave the album its cinematic quality. “I wanted it to feel like a journey,” Jude says. “From the opening of ‘Bodies at the Gate’ to the final explosion, everything had to be cohesive. Even the background textures—the sound of nuclear wind, the mechanical scrapes on guitar—they’re all deliberate. It should feel like stepping into a battlefield, a collapsing city, or an industrial hellscape.”

The result is an album best experienced in full. “We’re not flickers,” Jasper insists. “I want people to sit with the vinyl, look at the artwork, read the lyrics, and let it hit them from start to finish. That’s how we wrote it.”

DIY Until Death

Perhaps the most striking thing about Beyond Extinction isn’t just their vision, but their independence. Every piece of the album—from the artwork by Max Marshall to the CD and vinyl layouts—is handled in-house. “No label, no outside help,” Jude says. “We’ve trained ourselves to do everything: ads, website, merch, design. It’s hard. There’s no money in it. But that’s why the community around us matters so much.”

That community, centred around their Discord server, has become an extension of the band. “When people spend their hard-earned money on pre-orders, in this economy, we notice,” Jasper says. “It means the world. It’s not just about buying a record—it’s about saying, ‘We believe in what you’re doing.’”

The Stage as Crucible

The songs may be forged in bedrooms and rehearsal spaces, but Beyond Extinction are most alive on stage. This year alone, they’ve played with US death-metal exports Molder and Confusion in their hometown of Southend, and shared London stages with Signs of the Swarm and Pint Glass. Headline runs are already booked, and international dates soon to be revealed.

“Live is where it all comes together,” Jude says. “These songs were written to be felt in your chest, in the pit, in that moment when everyone moves together. That’s where the grooves matter.”

A Legacy in Progress

For all their future plans, there’s still a sense that ‘Where They Gather’ is as much about the past as it is about what’s ahead. Zach Scott’s riffs echo through its songs, a reminder of the bandmate lost too soon. “It feels like writing with him one last time,” Jude says, with a pause that lingers longer than words.

And yet, even in mourning, Beyond Extinction are moving forward—unyielding, unrelenting, and fiercely proud of what they’ve built. “This is the best thing we’ve ever created,” Jude concludes. “And it’s only the start.”

Beyond Extinction 'Where They Gather' New album out September 29th 2025

For more information checkout https://beyondextinction.online/