Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. This week, Max spoke with Jasper and Jude of Beyond Extinction to discuss their recent EP, recent touring and their rise in popularity.
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Max: You’ve just got back from what I guess is the first leg of your tour. How is that going? How’s that feeling?
Jasper: Mad? Yeah, it’s been sick, man. It was a long time coming. We handle all the booking and logistics in-house for tours and such. When I say “we,” it’s mainly me. I don’t mean to boast, but I’m the one who handles the emails. There was a lot of stress leading up to this tour, and it was difficult to put together for various reasons. So, when it was a week before the tour, I was just stressed out about it. I wasn’t as excited as I usually am.
The shows have been phenomenal, man. The support we’ve received has been incredible, personally for me, and I’m sure the other guys were just as blown away. We’ve had people traveling to every single one of our shows and following us around. We had a great turnout each night in London and South End, with triple figures attending. People are even buying our merch and saying nice things. It sounds cliché, but I really couldn’t ask for it to be any better. It’s been six months, so hopefully, the second leg of the tour will continue this way; otherwise, I’ll look really dumb retrospectively saying this.
Max: You’ve just released your EP. What’s the response been like?
Jude: It’s been really good. Yeah, we’ve received amazing reviews for it from various outlets. We got a seven out of ten from Metal Hammer, which is more than any of us could have hoped for. Pretty much all of us grew up reading Metal Hammer, so it was surreal seeing our work featured in there. Overall, it’s had a very positive response. People have liked the songs, and a few of them have already been released. Seeing people’s reactions to the two new ones that haven’t been released yet has been exciting. People have been coming to our shows and telling us that the new songs are sick, and they can’t wait for their release.
Max: It’s one of those things where I feel like people don’t realize that behind the scenes, making something like this takes a lot of time. By the time it’s released, the songs could be two years old, and you’re sick of hearing them.
Jasper: The album has been finished since last March, and it was released two days ago. It’s crazy how long it was in the pipeline, but it’s all right, man. It’s refreshing to see people enjoy the material during our live shows. We’ve heard the songs so many times that it’s become stale for us, but it’s normal for us. We rehearse and listen to it all the time. We’ve had the demos for about a year and a half now. When people who have only heard the recordings or haven’t seen us live yet come to our shows and really enjoy it, it boosts my personal love for it. I enjoy the songs more when I see other people enjoying them. That’s why doing live shows has helped so much. People are shouting lyrics back at us, and it’s really nice. It gives us a little boost, which is sweet.
Max: I wanted to delve into some of the influences behind the album, because I can see a lot of Black Tongue’s influence in the instrumentation. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Jasper: Yeah, absolutely. Zach, our guitarist, couldn’t be here today, not that he’s dead, he’s just busy with other things. We all listened to Black Tongue and really liked them. I think they were definitely one of our go-to bands. That subgenre of deathcore, or whatever you want to call it, has a bit of a void in terms of bands that have that downstream slow and doomy sound, which appeals to a lot of people. There aren’t too many bands in that space, although there are some very good ones. So yeah, Black Tongue’s influence is definitely present in our music. It’s not that difficult of an influence to incorporate, to be honest, but it’s certainly there.
We had several different options when it came to influences. When Jude joined the band a few years ago, he had different influences compared to Zach and I. Zach and I have always had a similar pool of influence in deathcore, and we grew up listening to bands like Thy Art Is Murder. Whereas, Jude brought in more of the progressive metalcore influence. So, his influences were different, and it was a challenge for him to switch to the mode of writing. He can tell you about his influences and what we all listened to. It has changed so much since we started writing this material.
Max: I can imagine. Can you speak to that?
Jude: Yeah, I brought more prog into the band. I brought more of that kind of stuff where it’s not too heavy, and I’ve never really been too deep into deathcore. It’s been good because it’s kind of been like a balancing force of music where the rest of the guys have been heavy on the groove and slam stuff, and I’ve been like, okay, how about this, like, you know, the little bit of prog seasoning. The EP has had some interesting influences, and there’s an element that runs through, calling back to classic deathcore like Chelsea Grin and Carnifex, especially with Zach’s riffs. He loves that kind of stuff. And I’ve come in with some Chicago style and my other influences like Gojira and some other bits and pieces, and we subtly crafted something. But we wrote it together, and the instrumental stuff was bounced around each other, and we came up with the music. A lot of the songs were written differently, and “Engraved” was written in about 20 minutes on beanbags while the rest of us were playing pool.
Jasper: It was a really interesting evening because I was basically using my phone’s notes app to keep track of our progress. We needed to have a certain amount of material written by a certain date and I was checking it off as we went along. We had only 25 minutes left in the writing session and we realized that we were behind on a song. That’s when Zach plugged his guitar into this tiny practice amp that was no bigger than three centimeters tall, and played some of the worst-sounding riffs I’ve ever heard. But somehow, I managed to write the first two thirds of the song while sitting on a beanbag and recording on our phones. We remembered the riffs and later Zach demoed it, and it ended up being the second single off of the EP. Our influences are spread far and wide, but the main thing we find is that if you vibe with the music, it doesn’t really matter where the influences come from. It sounds cliché, but we waited until we all decided that we were happy with every riff and every section of the song. And the minute you start to think that you’re behind, just remember that as long as you’re happy and back in the music, that’s all that matters.
Max: That’s very true. I agree. I think the thing is, you guys have influences from a range of things, and I can hear that on the EP, but it manifests itself in a different kind of way. In terms of the deathcore stuff, it’s a cool blend of the old style of breakdown-heavy deathcore and the new gloomier, more atmospheric stuff that’s been popular in the past few years, and it combines to make a newer kind of sound. I like that a lot. I’d love to hear how far you’re going to push the atmospherics and the melodics in the future. I feel like the EP teased it a little bit on the last song, and I’m very interested in that.
Jasper: I ordered a new album today from a band that I like, Monarch, but also when the EP is sick to listen to recordings. I love hearing what the number one song that I will listen to personally is, just to practise like this. I like the big riffs, and it’s very different. You’re right, there’s that kind of leaning towards creating an atmosphere with it, rather than just being a heavy, heavy song. Live is the worst for me because it involves a two-minute-long guitar riff with no vocals, and I just stand there like a lemon, trying to find myself. It’s awful, but on record, it’s really cool. I love how it sounds. Personally, I’d like to have some more stuff leaning towards that way, some longer tracks, maybe some stuff I’ve experimented with, kind of like soundscape building, rather than just heaviness. The thing for us is that we’ve always been a band that’s primary goal is to be as heavy as we can be, because we really enjoy that. Especially if it comes down to an album, which is probably what we’ll be doing next in terms of material and line-up, if you’ve got 11 or 12 spaces on an album, then you can afford to experiment with some stuff, and that’s definitely what we’re gonna make use of. I’d like to see more of it. We’ve already got some stuff written in the bare bones stage. There’s a lot of dirty time signatures, nice and slow, big angry, horrible atmospheres. There’s gonna be more of it I think the thing with us is that we’ve done the heavy stuff, and we really liked that, and we’re going to keep doing it. We’ve got time and space to do other things, and it’s just a matter of time before we start trying stuff from other avenues.
Max: What was the process like for making this? It’s your second EP, right? You’ve been going for a few years, so what led to the decision to make a second EP? What was different with this one compared to the previous one, and what have you learned going forward?
Jasper: The last one was made during lockdown, and we had some spare time. We had never really done a big writing project before, so we decided to meet up and spend some consistent time on it. The last EP was the first proper writing project we had ever done. This EP is an expansion of that. We learned that we write best when we are together, especially when it comes to fleshing out the first ideas and atmospheres of songs. The writing process for us is disorganized, but eventually, the pieces come together. Zach creates a lot of riffs, and I have different lyrical and thematic ideas. Eventually, they get pieced together almost accidentally. When we have enough structure, we demo it ourselves and then take it to the practice space. That’s how we did it for Nothing More Wretched as well. The long process of writing gave us time to trial and error things. We’ve written a lot of music before Nothing More Wretched that never saw the light of day because we weren’t happy with it. We did a lot of growing during that time period, and I’m glad we chose to make a second EP. It was a financial decision since we are independent and self-funded. We wanted to get material out, but we couldn’t plan for an album because time wasn’t on our side. The EP format gave us the scope to release a little pocket of what people can expect to hear more of. We’ll hopefully be doing an album for our next release.
Max: And I guess I just want to know, as a vocalist, what’s your technique? How did you learn? I’m always interested in learning about that.
Jasper: I started learning when I was a teenager, listening to metalcore and screaming into a mirror. I was like, “Yeah, exactly!” Basically, everyone was like, “I’m gonna do that!” since Asking Alexandria came out. And because I was into that kind of metal and metalcore stuff, it was quite frustrating. It’s pretty high-end stuff. I wasn’t doing vocals to suit our band at the time because we were just kids. I was just doing vocals because I wanted to do music stuff. And then as we locked down and decided to take this seriously, I mean, even during lockdown, some of us were still 17 years old. We weren’t necessarily trying to put this in. I didn’t do vocals for ages, I lost confidence in screaming and stuff. And I was like, “I’m gonna teach myself again, start from scratch“, I did that. I had some lessons with some people. I’ve done lessons and given lessons to people. I tried to make it part of my daily routine because I’m a firm believer that, especially with something as complex as doing vocals, trial and error has to be a massive part of your learning process. You have to be doing it regularly so that you get really in tune with the small differences. I do all four scored stuff now, and then I like a lot of the low lows, which are kind of tunnel throat stuff. A lot of the high highs are just false cords that I try to stick some fry on to. It’s one of those things where it jumps about day to day because you have to listen to your voice or listen to your body. If you were a professional athlete and you felt strains in your leg or you felt you had a tight shoulder or whatever, you warm up and change what you do accordingly, vocals are the same. If I’m struggling to hit those highs, then I’m going to drop to the lows more than if I’m starting with a load. I’m going to bring it up more. It does vary. Nowadays, there’s more attention, or at least more acknowledgment, that vocalists aren’t just making horrible noises. Now, there is a level of learning and practice that goes into it.
Max: So speaking to the idea that you guys are a young band that seems to have it all together, I mean, I’ve seen you guys everywhere now. It’s kind of crazy, right? I feel like I’ve met people in person who I didn’t even know listened to your band, but they’re just wearing your merch. I’ve seen stickers and shirts around whenever I go to London, which is a really cool thing.
Jasper: Yeah, it’s pretty insane. We’re at this point now where people at our shows are asking us to play songs that were released like five years ago, and I’m like, “Bro, I forgot those songs existed. I don’t even know the lyrics“. It’s crazy to see people singing lyrics to songs that I forget sometimes. It’s kind of happened without us really realizing it, almost like we started this tour thinking it would be fun and see how it goes, but we’re hitting big numbers every night and people are really enjoying the music. People who like our music in the way that a fan likes music, and that to me is something new. I mean, I didn’t do this to get to this point. I did this because I love music and I wanted to be in a band when I was a kid. I didn’t care about that side of it. And when we get to go to gigs and like, I was at a Napalm Death show the other week and this guy comes up to me and says, “Man, I saw your show. I’m really excited for it“. that means the world to me. That someone would put that time and effort into their thought towards what we do is absolutely crazy.
Jude: It’s what Jasper said. It’s new, it’s weird. It’s weird, but in a nice way. When I went to Sleep Token, when I went to the live show, and when I went to some other shows, maybe the Ingested one, people came up to me and said, “Oh yeah, I love the band. I saw you at x, y, z show“, and I just think that is crazy. It’s like an ego death where you see the world around you and realize that other people know who you are. Unless you’re an artist, a celebrity, a musician, or an actor, it doesn’t really happen. No one’s going to come up to you through work and say, “You’re my hero“, it’s strange, but I ain’t gonna lie, it’s cool. It’s more that none of us have egos. None of us are like, “Oh yeah, Brian, we’re sick, I’m in the band“, we’re all just very humbled by it and think that it’s absolutely so cool that you took the time to listen or come to a show, or even just check us out. That’s how I got into music. I just went to that show, or I just had a listen to that, or I looked up who the opener for the show was ahead of time. It’s so cool to see people on that same kind of journey as us. I speak for all the guys when I say we’re just so appreciative of anyone who checks us out. Regardless of whether they really enjoy our music or anything, just taking the time to check out a band that is trying their way is such an invaluable thing. People have decided to buy a CD or decided to buy a T-shirt just on a whim or just being like, “You guys are kind of cool“, that’s how it all starts. It’s so nice that people take the time, and we’ve experienced quite a nice reaction to the tour, like Jasper said. It still blows my mind that we have people who regularly listen to us, buy merch, or come to shows. Whenever we put on a show, and then it’s like, “Yeah, that is crazy“, It’s just such a blessing.
Max: For me, it starts to feel too real when people recognize me.
Jasper: I understand what you mean. It’s like when people are really into us and they’ve bought merchandise and tickets to our shows, it’s amazing but also kind of crazy. We never intended to do this for that reason. When people come up to me and give feedback on our set and say they enjoyed it, I love that. I don’t know how to respond to compliments because I want to give more back but we can’t just give out free merchandise all the time. When we were younger, we sold T-shirts for a small profit. It’s a whole new world and it’s hard to balance how to deal with these interactions. Especially when touring, it’s hard to constantly communicate and socialize if you’re feeling hungry or unwell. The main emotion we feel is gratitude, there are so many cool bands out there, and for people to choose ours to give their time and respect to is monumental. It’s what keeps us going.
Nothing More Wretched is available now via Dead Species Records, and you can order the record here.