LA’s Purest Form is on a quest to set you free. Their S/T EP, out today, bolts together heavy metal and EBM (electronic body music) for a modern industrial sound that combines the cathartic freedom found both on club dance floors and in sweaty mosh pits. Formed in 2023, the band consists of guitarist and programmer Madison Woodward (Fury, Object of Affection), bassist Riley Joyner (Pocketknife), and vocalist Story Beeson (Choking on Ash, Vacant Future), who were brought together by fate to make bodies pulse to machine metal noise and release us from the mundanity of our daily grind.
Frontwoman Story Beeson got her start fronting grindcore bands at just 14 years old, where her powerful vocals emerged at a young age as she served as the terrifying, energetic vocalist of hardcore/death metal outfit Choking on Ash and hardcore punk band Vacant Future. When merged with Woodward’s dark dance beats and macerating riffs and the punishing, chugging bass of Riley Joyner, the overall impact of Purest Form has both a blasting heaviness and punishing industrial gaze that isn’t mutually exclusive with a sense of fun.
Woodward and Beeson met while working at an independent venue in downtown LA, where they bonded over a shared love of dark underground music. For years, Woodward had been making heavy synthesizer sequences in between writing hardcore and metal songs for his other bands, and experimenting with song formats inspired by the 90s industrial, alternative, thrash metal, nü metal, and “straight Orange County mosh metal” he grew up listening to. When Woodward came to Beeson with a collection of bedroom-demo industrial techno beats he’d been making “to get it out of [his] system,” even he couldn’t have predicted how well Beeson’s shredding vocals would complete their transformation into massive synth-metal.
Beeson’s lyrics, with themes of the apocalypse and societal decay, compliment Woodward’s cataclysmic vision. She was inspired by early experiments in industrial music that involved sampling the sound of factory machinery, power tools, and even rocks being thrown down staircases. “Purest Form is an amalgamation of everything we love,” Woodward tells, “without being a facsimile of anything specific.”
Above all, Woodward, Beeson, and Joyner want Purest Form to offer an escape from the societal machinations that keep us subdued, and with the band’s driving riffs and infectious beats, nobody will be able to resist headbanging. “We don’t want people just standing around,” Joyner says. “You can be kind and still hold hardness.”
“Music is supposed to set you free,” Beeson adds. “Day to day, we’re all subduing ourselves to function—what’s the point of music if it’s not to set you free? Don’t be afraid to look like a freak.”
Purest Form EP is available today across all streaming platforms. They’ve also released a sinister, striking video for the EP’s closer “Self Destruction.” The track leans further into influences such as Ministry, Godlfesh and Sepultura. “It’s about one’s outward ego / inner self and the complicated battle between the two,” tells the band. The video was directed / shot by Jeremy Stith and “was inspired by 1990’s ‘Begotten’ with costume and aesthetics as well as Wim Wenders camera work,” notes Beeson. Watch it below.
