The title of Agriculture’s astounding new album is lifted from the statement that’s printed onto their T-shirts: “I love the spiritual sound of ecstatic black metal by the band Agriculture.” On the follow-up to their 2023’s self-titled LP, the Los Angeles band toys with the technical boundaries of the genre and stretches its transcendent power, partly by digging through the muck of how it feels to love its intense extremes. Shifting between and blurring the visions (and vocals) of main songwriters Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson, its waves are unpredictable but frequently exultant in their chaotic spawl. The most fitting metaphor arrives on the closing track, which ends with the proclamation: “Sometimes I’m lifted and sometimes they crash down on me/ I’m totally out of control/ With a mouth full of water.” It’s funny to think of The Spiritual Sound as The Life of a Showgirl’s release-day neighbour (the Chat Pile/Beyoncé synergy of 2025?), but Taylor Swift’s statement ironically feels more apt in describing the lives and laughter and tears that converge in Agriculture’s music (I dare not call it a mosaic): “It’s beautiful. It’s rapturous. It is frightening.” That’s because it’s concerned with daily, not just famous, experience, loving the unabashed joy – ecstasy, even – in their fiery and fundamental contradictions.
1. My Garden
True to its title, the album opens with a powerful evocation of what the Fire Sermon, the third recorded discourse delivered by the Buddha, might actually sound like. “Things as they are not as I want them to be,” Dan Meyer screams, though its prayerful frenzy and sensual onslaught renders ‘My Garden’ a hugely satisfying introduction for even the most stylistically purist fan: thunderous blast beats, chugging riffs, and a violently wiggling guitar solo are exactly how most listeners will want The Spiritual Sound to set their ears aflame – even if they’re intercepted by an oddly sweet melody that hints at its diverse scope.
2. Flea
The intensity dims to reveal a haze of despair, folding fragmented yet evocative spoken word between the familiar weight of filthy shrieks and riffs. Teasing one of the record’s most blissful melodies, it’s curiously labyrinthine while being far from its longest track, an impression made all the more potent by its final words: “Where trust and love fail/ Fear makes a map/ You followed it.”
3. Micah (5:15am)
As the band has helpfully clarified, the song, heavy as it may be, is not a reference to the Bible verse featuring the passage, “And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.” Rather, Levinson adapted the title from Ted Berrigan’s ‘Sonnet #2’, whose stream of conscioussness reveals the mundane brutalities of daily life. The ecstatic passage arrives torrentialy, stinging in its harcore punk delivery but anthemic in the clarity of its refrain: “Can’t seem to find it/ What’s in the way/ Woke up this morning/ It’s all the same.” While Berrigan announces simply to a friend, “He died,” the grief here is allowed to fester. “The current stays the same/ Nothing remains,” Levinson broods while offering words we can all scream like we want to.
4. The Weight
In their gnawing specificity, the trio of songs that follow ‘My Garden’ seethe with a different kind of horror, pervasive in a way you can’t quite put a finger on but affects everyone in your periphery; ‘The Weight’ is about as detailed as it gets, mentioning several individuals by name and compelling you to trace their stories in the lyric sheet. Its sludginess is as unrelenting as the fear that connects them, yes, like a map – underlined by a fried guitar solo that’s one of the most strangely unique tones Richard Chowenhill fashions out of his instrument – and even when the instrumental simmers down to just bass and guitar, the shrieking persists, still overshadowing any sense of relief.
5. Serenity
The song speeds up the tempo even as it shifts its attention toward divine, internal peace – almost challenging the outward-looking anxiety of the previous track. Its most discomfiting line is also its most profound: “No death could be worth escaping/ The timbre of this pain.”
6. The Spiritual Sound
Whether or not it’s a spiritual sound is open to interpretation, but ‘The Spiritual Sound’ is definitely a sound, a guitar drone lasting for just half a minute.
7. Dan’s Love Song
“Ecstatic black metal” is a great self-descriptor, and The Spiritual Sound proves just how wide a net it can cast. But Agriculture know when to elude its limitations, and a song about raising a child is one of those exceptions; especially after ‘Serenity’, the clarity of Meyer’s singing over a dreamy, drumless instrumental makes it sound like no suffering is worth missing the wellspring of this gift.
8. Bodhidharma
Named after the Chinese monk considered the First Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, the song would be the album’s most dynamic moment even if it weren’t placed after ‘Dan’s Love Song’. It twitches, quivers, and splinters off any semblance of a traditional song part – one verse is so disarmingly raw it feels like peeking backstage rather than part of the show, while the main riff is so colossal as if it could swallow up the whole building. Levinson’s singing here is bloodcurdlingly good, plunging into transcendent visions that emerge right on the brink of death, as is Chowenhill’s devillishly rangy solo.
9. Hallelujah
Bob Dylan’s influence on Meyer’s songwriting (“50-60% of my listening diet is just Bob”) doesn’t fully shine through until ‘Hallelujah’, his voice striking the perfect emotional balance, though the band expands it into more than a singer-songwriter track. Even with a swirling riff segueing into the metal section, it’s not the most graceful juxtaposition, though the lyrics make it feel spiritually coherent.
10. The Reply
Switching up the groove is the first exciting element of ‘The Reply’; then comes Meyer’s contemplative narration; then, with the mesmerizing appearance of Emma Ruth Rundle’s voice (they sure could pull off a May Our Chambers Be Full), it becomes crushingly immersive. “I am fucking freezing/ And the water looks cold but I wanna try swimming/ And go out beyond where I can stand/ And float around in ceaseless motion/ Of waves,” they sing. Agriculture are more attuned to the effort than the wreckage, pushing past their breaking point and scaling back, the way every moment stretches through eternity before returning right back to now.
