Five years ago Byzanthian Neckbeard dropped their debut album, From The Clutches Of Oblivion, the waves of which carried them as far as the Blookdstock metal festival in Derbyshire and The Underworld in Camden.

Since then, despite the loss of one guitarist, the trio have continued to cement their place on the Channel Islands’ metal scene with occasional appearances that have always been note worthy.

These culminated at the 2019 Chaos festival where they unveiled a whole raft of new material and now, with the Extinction EP, we have a first chance to hear some of that on record.

Things begin with Coffin Bomb which sets the scene with a build up of sonic textures swirling from ear to ear before it settles into a deep, thick, slowly driving sound that develops gradually to a final explosion after a barrage of fuzzy riffing and multi layered vocals.

Dunes continues the build with a great head banging groove coming to the fore and further use of the dual vocals that have become a part of Byzanthian Neckbeard’s live sound and do a great job of spanning the doom and groove with hints of black metal.

While these two tracks are perfectly good once we reach the title track, Extinction, they feel like merely a warm up as this vast, crushing, beast comes lumbers into view.

Here the band really get to show off their best; from Paul Etasse’s rolling thunder drumming to Phil Skyrme’s guitar riffs that wrongfoot expectations behind a wall of fuzz in the best of ways to a bass tone from Dan Robilliard that is spectacular to behold and holds the whole thing down.

Somehow at seven minutes Extinction still feels like it has more to give and the whole EP seems to be merely whetting the appetite for more, so I hope it’s not five years until we hear something of record from Byzanthian Neckbeard again (all indications are it will be much sooner).