Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound
Release Date: 3rd October 2025
Label: The Flenser
Bandcamp
Genre: Black Metal, Blackgaze.
FFO: Deafheaven, Blackbraid, Harakiri for the Sky, Alcest.
Review By: Jeff Finch
Los Angeles. When one thinks of music attached to LA, as a rock fan, The Battle of Los Angeles from RATM might come to mind, among a bevy of other releases and genres. What doesn’t come to mind? Black Metal. And, yet, here we are. With American Black Metal bands Deafheaven (San Francisco) and Blackbraid (Upstate New York) releasing critically acclaimed albums and doing world tours, the idea of American Black Metal isn’t a new one, but the idea of it coming from the sunshine and bustling Hollywood activities of LA is certainly not the first thought to come to mind. Agriculture doesn’t care about these preconceived notions and prove that on their newest album The Spiritual Sound, an album so punishing, so exhausting, it really does feel like you’ve been through a battle in LA.
What makes Agriculture stick out, especially with this newest album, is twofold: their ability to weave multiple soundscapes into their songs, and their inherent positivity as a band, the complete antithesis to their crushing power. Take opener My Garden: shredding, virtuosic solos open the track up, the band at their technical death metal best, thundering riffs taking charge in short order, a perfect precursor to the punishing, tortured shrieks of vocalist, and bassist, Leah B Levinson. Black metal shrieks are supposed to be abrasive, but she takes this to an entirely new level: you feel the anguish, the pain, the energy being sapped from your body. But the band doesn’t want you to suffer, so they throw in clean vocals and a couple of interludes that harken to Between the Buried and Me, the first track a musical roller coaster that leaves listeners bordering on concussed but incredibly satisfied. Meanwhile, Micah (5:15am) throws us a curveball, the entire track a post-hardcore shell with visceral black metal shrieks, inhuman blasts, and filthy riffs on the inside, a Cadbury egg for those looking for sonic violence.
The Weight lives up to its moniker, a song so drenched in heft it refuses to let listeners escape: catchy riffs transition to furious tremolos, attaining a haunting sound completely bereft of melody as the rhythm chugs along in the background, the only goal to grate on our ears and make us suffer, a rising wall of tremolo, spiralling upward, building a sense of urgency and danger. A throat shredding shriek pulls us out of the ascension, the guitar ripping like metal scraping metal, chaos drowning out any sense of melody, the shrill wall of noise swallowing rhythm and voice alike. The song departs with distant, pained shouts, alone and desperate in their intensity and fervor.
Hallelujah acts as an interlude of sorts, a soft vocal performance crossed with minimal music accompaniment, a deep breath before the final burst of closer The Reply. Light jazz drumming coalesces with a wall of serrated distortion, chewing straight into the listener’s skull, a melody forming with every subsequent note, the riffs segueing into light, distant clean singing over clean guitars, their gentle resonance an unseen architecture, holding up the voice in graceful silence, lifting without overshadowing. Tremolo riffs and thunderous percussion rip us from this subtle reprieve, the clean vocals now fighting a wall of sound for dominance. Sonic evisceration, delivered through jagged screams, pulls us back to the metal reality of the album, at one point so high its nigh impossible to determine if the sounds are vocals or a guitar’s screaming pitch, this tsunami of noise departing into the ether, fading to black as the track reaches its conclusion. If this is the reply, its recipient will beg to unsend the message, because being on the receiving end of this reply, one doesn’t get answers. Rather, they get their face torn off by riffs and throat-ripping vocals.
In case it’s not abundantly obvious by now, Agriculture, while not reinventing the wheel, is crafting black metal that is so punishing and unforgiving in its execution that one could be forgiven for thinking the band was cursing the world and all its inhabitants. And while the opener DOES make reference to fire sermons and burning, most of the lyrics are not unrelentingly callous as the music would make one think. If you’re a fan of having your face eaten by a leopard while Lou Reed’s metal machine music plays in the background, this might be right up your alley. Or, if you like Deafheaven and Blackbraid.
(5 / 5)
