Agriculture
The Spiritual Sound
The Flenser
We first encountered Agriculture at Supersonic Festival 2024 and our first impressions were that, firstly they were awesome and secondly they played black metal complete with fry screamed vocals in major keys. That was a startling juxtaposition to begin with, but the joy with which they delivered it was also disarmingly beautiful. We are now in possession of their new album and can report that Agriculture is much more than that. They occupy a space where black metal meets noise rock and psychedelia and power violence (but again in a happy way) Confused? Read on. Opening blast My Garden sounds somewhat angry but playful and the following Flea has more in common with Imperial Triumphant’s flouting of metal codes of conduct as its initial hyper attack segues into dreamy grunge like melody and back to blast beats with a guitar solo and tone J Mascis would be proud of. At this point the only things this has in common with black metal are the vocals and drums and it seems to do the band a disservice to even align them with that realm. This isn’t black it’s a kaleidoscope of colour and self expression and moments of real tenderness. Micah (5 AM) is essentially a post hardcore track in the verse interspersed with metallic noise which then about faces into a full tremolo picked extreme post hardcore and it’s really time to forget about genre labels altogether, however they are useful in this context.Elsewhere The Weight brings slow motion doom into play and Serenity gleams with post rock beauty. Dan’s Love Song is a beautiful beatless shoegazey drone song. Lead single Bodhidharma is positioned on monolithic riffing until it breaks down into a stripped intimate almost weeping vocal accompanied by a sub bass and minimal drum verse before exploding back into the giant riffs and back to harsh noise and minimal arpeggiated beauty.All in all Agriculture is utterly unique, surprising and mostly uncategorisable, no matter how hard we try. One thing we do know, as the day glow bliss of The Reply fades, Agriculture is a pure joy to behold.
Review by George Miller