Album review: Beyond Extinction – Where They Gather

From 19th century novelist Richard Jefferies’ visions of London becoming fetid swampland to the dystopian urban sprawl of Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One, depictions of a metropolis falling into decay have long proved a compelling subject. The latest artists to engage with this tradition are Essex deathcore chaps Beyond Extinction, making a bold debut with a concept album about the final city on Earth. Spoiler: it’s an absolute hellscape.

Where They Gather’s title-track immediately establishes a world of despair, with nightmarish images of people ‘Masked in each others’ sewn-on faces’ in an environment of fire and death. Essentially, their chosen subject matter gives Beyond Extinction free rein to delve deeply into violence and nihilism; as vocalist Jasper Harmer puts it, “This city is the place where all my hate and repulsion has come to live." And while the album presents as an imaginary future shock, Apache’s declarations of war (‘Bomb their holy land to dust / Orphan their sons and daughters’) can’t help but have resonance with current real-world conflicts.

Down-tuned and downtempo, Beyond Extinction’s music boasts a doomy quality to match the horror of Jasper’s lyrics. Slowing their pace only enhances the potency of their slamming deathcore, with Traitors To The Ropes and Tyranny dealing death in particularly confident manner. The latter tune also features a guest spot from Alex Teyen of Black Tongue, while Josh Davies from Ingested pops up on Apache. It feels like one generation of British death-dealers passing the torch to their younger brothers, and on the basis of Where They Gather, that would be well-deserved. Their future looks rather brighter than the one they’ve belched into life here, that’s for sure.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Thy Art Is Murder, Fit For An Autopsy, Osiah

Where They Gather is self-released on 26th September