Purest Form
Resistance
Dais Records
Despite its brief fifteen minute runtime, there’s a meal to be made out of LA trio Purest Form’s latest EP, their debut on Dais, both in terms of attitude and presentation, as well as what its selection of very clear influences might portend for the larger post-industrial landscape. Drawing upon familiar markers of 90s electronic aggression, Resistance provides a tight test case for their read on that historical moment.
Opener “Animal” functions as a strong calling card for Purest Form, showing both their capacity for a catchy, heavily processed guitar riff as well as Story Beeson’s acidic growl that’s part grindcore, part death metal. Factor in just the right amount of backing programming and an easily chantable chorus and it becomes both cathartic and anthemic in short order. It is, to be glib, exactly the type of thrashing industrial rock glory which KMFDM have been failing to recapture for the past couple of decades.
Much of the rest of the EP’s made up of densely programmed two-minute wipeouts jammed up with breaks, more heavily processed guitar now functioning more for colour than riffs, and more spleen and vile being vented. If that sounds on paper fairly akin to digital hardcore, listening to “Break” and “More” will do little to dissuade that presumption. “Beyond Terror” acts as a quick riposte to this frenetic pace, offering post-hardcore chug while the vocals cut through equivocations about the killings of Palestinians – “call it what you like, it’s genocide.”
And then there’s the closing cover. Fifteen or twenty years back, an industrial metal act doing a straightforward version of The Prodigy’s “Breathe” would have felt awkwardly retrograde. However, a full three decades on from the original release and overdriven into the red to the point that it’s difficult to distinguish original tracks from sampled ones, Purest Form’s take on “Breathe” feels like the best sort of “oh shit, they’re covering this?” moment at the end of a packed and sweaty basement show.
In discussing the appeal of the 90s sources Pures Form borrow from it’s important to not overstate how new they might be to the band; both Beeson and guitarist/programmer Madi Woodward both have lengthy rap sheets with slews of hardcore and metal acts going back a decade or so. But there’s no question that a combination of their backgrounds beyond industrial and the historical space separating Resistance from those acts helps invigorate their dense and furious angle on them.
