Agriculture: Spiritual Healing
AGRILCULTURE, the self styled ecstatic black metal band, have just released their latest album The Spiritual Sound, and it is a stunning collection of extremely forward thinking extreme music that takes black metal into so many different realms, executed per with every single time.
We caught up with three quarters of the band in vocalist/bassist Leah B. Levinson, guitarist Richard Chowenhill and vocalist/guitarist Dan Meyer to get an insight into The Spiritual Sound and where AGRICULTURE are at right now.
We commence with Leah explaining about the outlook of The Spiritual Sound and where the seeds of the album came from. “A lot of it came out of following what we’ve discovered with the past three releases, the two EPs and the LP. I feel like with those, we laid all these seeds for things we could explore.”
Talk then turns to the refreshing nature of the music of AGRICULTURE and how they can take black metal into those different realms in terms of their music and their lyrics, with the sublime album track Bodhidharma in particular celebrating the creator of Zen Buddhism which shows the scope of the bands music, as Richard tells us of the parallels. “I think we’re really interested in that and part of it is being like, hey, these things actually are really metal, like the father of Zen Buddhism cutting off his eyelids, and then a student coming to offer his severed arm. It doesn’t get much more metal than that! That is at the foundation of this Buddhist practice so I think that’s where we’re coming from.”
Leah then expands on more of the important influences of the record. “I was thinking about my thing on the album, which is reading a bunch of AIDS era literature and stuff from that time, and being influenced by that, This morning I was just realising, all of that stuff was happening and being created in parallel to extreme metal. It was a literal plague that was happening but there’s not really a record of any extreme metal dealing with this. So for me, it’s like this reimagining thing of what if these bands in the 80s and 90s were thinking seriously about what was happening to the queer community around them.”
With the music of AGRICULTURE forever evolving, Richard expands upon this and the band adding different dimensions to their sound. “I think as we play together more, and write music together more, we realise new ways of holistically incorporating influences that we have, and a lot of them are just influences from the past. We just find ways of getting that across, and speaking for myself, at least, I found I feel more secure or brave to take certain chances, because we’re doing less of the genre thing now, and more just kind of writing music that feels right to us. The crazy lead guitar stuff at the beginning of My Garden. That was something that I probably, in the past, would have questioned, but this time, I was like, I feel totally confident that this is the right decision, and this is how the song goes, and this is how I play and and this is right. There’s a growing confidence in the band, and the band’s ability to really deliver something.”
With that forward thinking aspect and AGRICULTURE taking on the helm of ecstatic black metal, Richard explains how this term has summed the band up. “There’s a little bit of the tongue in cheek there, which is fun to play with. I don’t know if we’ll ever back away from calling ourselves that just because it’s fun. But I don’t know if it’s necessarily quite as descriptive as it was with the last EP. Everything that we’re doing very much comes from an attitude that I think is very inspired by black metal, in a sense of making this kind of spiritual music which has an almost over the top seriousness to it.” Dan continues. “Good black metal is always teetering on the edge of being ridiculous. but then there’s bands like GORGOROTH, where it feels almost scary, so I think that that carries into what we’re doing now.”
We then delve into the band’s favourite black metal choices. Richard chooses. “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, of course, incredible! The second and third DEATHSPELL OMEGA records. I’d say that’s definitely in the black metal tradition. and for me, that was really, really cool, because it was like, these guys are doing something experimental and weird It’s just really compelling, the way they use those black metal sounds,” while Dan adds, “One of my favourite records is Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam by GORGOROTH, I think that’s the best black metal record. It’s perfect. It has everything the genre does.”
We finish things off with AGRICULTURE enthusiastically telling us about their recent triumphant UK tour, with Leah stating, “it was absolutely incredible. Amazing audiences, we had a great time. There are a few shows that really stuck out as being really good, extremely warm audiences. The Paris show was great. The Dublin show was amazing. London was great too!” Dan continues, “Cork was insane. That was so good. Salford, Newcastle.”
With the tour happening before The Spiritual Sound being released, AGRICULTURE were blown away by the response to the new material being played live, as Richard tells us. “Three of the songs that we played on this tour are from the new record, and one of them was, a brand new song that’s that will be on LP three. It’s great to have new material, and it’s great to have new material that people are also excited about. As soon as we started the drum intro to Bodhidharma, everybody started cheering, people already know that song. People already knew The Weight, it was incredible!”
The Spiritual Sound is out now via The Flenser. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS125 here:
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