Ecstasy may not be the first emotion that springs to mind when beholding the ghoulish dirge of black metal, but that’s what sets apart the Southern California quartet known as Agriculture. While embracing the Norweigan-born subgenre’s overall too-muchness, the L.A. outfit’s upcoming self-titled debut carves a lane beyond the typical bounds of an extreme heavy-metal mutation known for corpse paint, scorched churches and infamous cases of real-life killings. Instead of dwelling in the darkest corners of human suffering, Agriculture sets out to spark an overwhelm of joy.
“Extremely good feelings are just as intense and just as important as extremely bad ones,” co-founding guitarist and vocalist Daniel Meyer-O’Keeffe, fresh off a silent retreat at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, says on a video call with his three bandmates and scruffy dog Shiloh. “Black metal has a lot of baggage, and the history is focused on the darker side of things, but the template is actually very helpful for expressing really cool shit as well. The goal [for Agriculture] is to augment happiness, with the recognition that happiness is a very intense thing, and incorporate some kind of acknowledgement of suffering.”
Joy and suffering go hand-in-hand on the band’s debut LP, out July 21 via cult-favorite “dark music” record label The Flenser. Left-field elements like pedal steel, saxophone and the poetry of Dylan Thomas dovetail with traditional black metal staples of breakneck blast beats, soaring tremolo-picked guitars and glass-busting shrieks, all delivered with the good-natured spirit of a slogan minted on the band’s merch-table bumper stickers: Keep honkin’ — I’m listening to the spiritual sound of ecstatic black metal by the band Agriculture.
“One of the things that’s fun about metal is that we get to sort of hyper-categorize ourselves. It’s so funny that there’s a difference between ‘funeral doom’ and just ‘doom,’ or ‘depressive-suicidal black metal’ versus ‘atmospheric black metal,’” Meyer-O’Keeffe says. “So I think on the one hand, it’s useful to frame what we’re doing, but it’s also something you can have a little bit of fun with.”
To that end, bassist and vocalist Leah B. Levinson jokes that the band consider themselves “evangelists” of their ecstatic brand of extremity. “When we perform at non-metal shows, people will come up to us and be like, ‘I don’t really listen to a lot of music like this, but that was incredible,’” she says. “Even though they don’t know what to call it, they come away very moved. We’re interested in making this extreme music accessible by allowing people to be more receptive to it, rather than keeping people out.”
‘The glory of the ocean’
But where does all that ecstasy come from? Considering the band’s sunny SoCal surroundings, a far cry from the gnarly alpine peaks and glacial fjords of black metal’s Scandinavian roots, it stands to reason that the singular music of Agriculture is woven with the awesome power and beauty of the Pacific Ocean.
“I’ve never lived anywhere that didn’t have easy access to a coastline, and I think it would be really weird for me not to be close to an ocean,” Meyer-O’Keeffe says. “The ocean has this kind of sublime power. It’s this sort of natural play palace … and swimming is fun or whatever, but if you go out into it a little bit, suddenly the vibe changes entirely. You get into these really wonderful and sometimes frightening positions of powerlessness. I think that combination of awe and play is really helpful for getting in touch with something divine.”
This terrifying encounter with divinity is a cornerstone of the Agriculture project. Calling black metal “the only kind of spiritual music that isn’t really corny,” before quickly acknowledging the schmaltz of certain theistic Satanist tropes within the subculture, Meyer-O’Keeffe and his bandmates leverage the extremity and excess of the music into something that feels like a harrowing brush with holiness.
According to percussionist Kern Haug, who co-founded the band with Meyer-O’Keeffe after the pair met at a noise show in the early pre-pandemic days of 2020, the music’s transporting effect — to the depths of the Pacific Ocean, or the threshold of spiritual bliss — is by design. “That’s the thing I’m always interested in,” he says. “I like music that can act as an access point to a broader world that’s usually a little less accessible.”
And while the elevating spirit of Agriculture’s ecstatic sound is baked into the band’s thrilling first studio album, poised to make waves among discerning metalheads and curious outsiders upon next month’s release, it’s on stage where the quartet’s joyful mission reaches its true amplitude. For a historical analogue to what concertgoers can expect from the band’s upcoming tour in support of the new record with labelmates Drowse and Sprain, guitarist Richard Chowenhill points to an unlikely musical figure: Renaissance lutenist Francesco da Milano of the 16th century.
“There are all these primary source reports of people being overcome with ecstasy because this guy was just so fucking good at playing the lute,” Chowenhill says. “He had all these licks and was able to improvise over and over again [with] overwhelming feeling. For us, that’s a big thing, too — the ecstasy comes across in the performance.”
ON THE BILL: Drowse with Agriculture, Sprain and Palehorse Palerider. 7 p.m. Monday, June 12, Hi-Dive, 7 S. Broadway, Denver. Tickets here.
