Across Agriculture's three tremendous, triumphant releases — 2022's The Circle Chant EP, 2023's self-titled full-length and 2024's Living Is Easy EP — a pattern has emerged: the music rises, trembling in optimism and memory, even when it's rooted in adversity, need and tumult. It's awash in noise and devastation, but from the sound and the fury, it purifies. There is change and growth, acceptance and celebration. There is love.
Agriculture's take on metal, which they've dubbed "ecstatic black metal," is also surprisingly welcoming. Even more surprisingly, it invites listeners who may never have dreamed of stepping foot into a mosh pit.
As lead vocalist, co-lyricist and bassist Leah B. Levinson describes it, "A lot of people who are less used to listening to metal resonate with the sort of songcraft element that we bring to it, and that brings them in, which is something we absolutely welcome. We love when we hear that. A lot of people who aren't used to listening to metal do enjoy what we do."
"I think a lot of the way that people relate to metal has a lot in common with the way people relate to our music," adds Dan Meyer, guitarist and co-lyricist. "People who really like Slipknot probably have pretty emotional relationships to that band. [Metal is] also just really fun. And I think that's something that we're trying to do, too. We don't have the scary imagery; we're not wearing masks or robes anymore. We're playing around with metal without necessarily needing to limit ourselves to those tropes. They're more just useful techniques."
Meyer and drummer Kern Haug formed Agriculture in Los Angeles, having met at a noise show in 2019. Soon after, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic derailed their plans of starting a band, but slowly, once it became safe to do so, the duo started getting together and improvising. These sessions, as Meyer describes it, "slowly moved in a black metal-adjacent direction," although neither musician had any experience playing metal. "We both came from sort of more noise and experimental backgrounds," he says. "So we were just figuring it out as we went. And then eventually we started playing these songs that I was writing at the time, and we were like, 'Man, it would really be cool to have another guitar player.' And Kern was like, 'Well, I have this friend who's really a shredder. 'He really can play, and he's really good at metal, but I'm kind of nervous to ask him, because we don't know what we're doing.'"
After some more intense rehearsing, they gathered up the courage, and when they asked Richard Chowenhill to join as second guitarist, he didn't hesitate. "I was so stoked to be asked to do this," Chowenhill says, "just really happy to play with people. I love Kern, and I ended up loving everybody else."
After Chowenhill joined, the time commitment needed to practice these complex songs eventually caused their original bass player to quit, which is when Levinson came into the picture.
Levinson, who Meyer knew from the experimental scene, started out as the band's new bassist, but she soon embraced a more forward-facing position. "I started playing and learning the music," she says, "At a certain point, I was like, 'Damn, I think I could scream too.' I'd done a lot of punk bands and no wave and stuff like that, so I was a little bit practiced in extreme vocals." Everyone laughs as she adds, "It's not often you join a band and be like, 'Let me do the vocals.'"
Meyer interjects: "Yeah, let me just front this band." And thus, Agriculture was born.
This laughter and camaraderie continues throughout the interview. The bandmates are funny, friendly and clearly close. Sometimes, they speak over top of one another in excitement, but more frequently, they check in with each other, confirming answers and motivations and responding to each other, like old friends with a lot in common.
Less than a month after Levinson joined, the band entered the studio to record their first album, 2023's self-titled Agriculture, a dizzying, swirling collection of songs that would intimidate most new members — but not Levinson. Meyer points out, "Just to give Leah her flowers, she came in a month before we recorded our first record and learned all of that music in three weeks, which is great. That record is really hard to play, so that was really kind of remarkable."
Levinson adds, "It was a really fun learning process, because I felt like I was playing a really hard video game. Every time I got through a song, it was like beating a boss or something, which was really fun for me."
When it came time to look for a label, there was one that stood out above the rest: San Francisco's self-proclaimed "dark music record label," the Flenser. "Even from early practices," Meyer says, "Kern and I both had this dream of, 'Man, it'd be really cool to work with the Flenser for whatever this project turns into, because there's just nothing like that.' It's just such a unique label. I don't know of anything else that has the same curatorial focus."
And as Levinson notes, "There's just fundamental support for the music they're putting out. Jonathan [Tuite, Flenser's founder] is really tied in with the metal scene and the industry around it, but at the same time, he really wants to push the boundaries of that music and he supports experimentation and the creative vision of his artists."
Meyer agrees: "He has big ears."
With bands like Have a Nice Life, Planning for Burial, Ragana and Agriculture's tourmates Chat Pile, the label has taken on some of the most impressive, forward-thinking and beloved heavy bands of the moment. And yet, while Agriculture bugged him for months to attend one of their shows, when he finally showed up to one, it was nothing short of a disaster.
"He came to see us at our worst show, right?" asks Meyer. Chowenhill nods immediately, adding, "Worst show ever." Amps exploded in the middle of solos, and it was impossible to keep it together.
Levinson also remembers the band's very on-brand outfit choices: "At that point, we were still wearing robes and playing with a fog machine. We were doing this traditional black metal thing, which is really fun to play with and mess around with. It was just hilarious, because we're a pretty new band, wearing these robes on a tiny dive bar stage, and everything's going wrong."
Despite the rough gig, Tuite was enamoured with the band. He commented on the strength of their live show, which was a shock, and soon after, asked them to send him their first record. Unfortunately, their never-ending comedy of errors continued, with Meyer accidentally sending Tuite the unmixed and unmastered version of the self-titled LP — a record that Chowenhill had spent countless hours working on. This led to even more misunderstandings and hiccups, yet the band somehow managed to stay together; there's no blame thrown around in the Agriculture camp. Thankfully, Tuite saw both their artistry and potential. Through all of the fog and robes and mixups, he signed the band, and that's where they remain today.
For the members of Agriculture, these setbacks have only made them stronger. As Meyer describes it, "One of the things that's really important to us is being kind to each other. I think we do a really nice job of making sure that people feel supported, even when they fuck up."
Chowenhill adds, "That's hugely important because it's good to move past these things as quickly as possible. Ultimately, the real meat of the thing, for me, is the love I have for these folks, and the love I have for the music and for the experience of being in the van with them and in the rehearsal space and in the studio and on stage. [That love is] just so immense. You obviously have to address issues when they come up, but it is, as Dan says, so important to just say, 'Look, let's fix the problem and move on.' It's all good. Nobody's trying to sabotage anybody here. We're human beings. We make mistakes. People get tired."
Chowenhill looks over at Meyer, who's looking back at him. "Dan's looking at me like he's trying to stop me." They all laugh. "It's the long con," Meyer says. Everyone laughs. "The con keeps going."
While Agriculture's music is certainly loud and abrasive, filled with jagged riffs, blasting drums and Levinson's intense screams, the cathartic nature of their music is built through both melodic noise and quiet intimacy. For every bleating sax screech, there is a softly strummed and folky foil; for every scream, there is a warbled coo; for every blast beat, there is silence. It is metal for people who might not always be into metal, yet the members of Agriculture don't see themselves as contrarians.
"A lot of the time, we get asked to draw a contrast between what we're doing and more traditional forms of metal," says Meyer. "And I will say, we're not critics, we're not interested in critiquing Mayhem. We really like that music too! That music is really, really fun, but it's also different from what we're doing."
Levinson agrees: "The four of us are, first and foremost, musicians and songwriters and committed to the craft as composers. Our relationship to metal [comes from] being really inspired by a lot of metal music and seeing the potential in the genre and in the techniques that metal uses. We use [metal] to take what we're doing to a different place, as a toolkit that comes already made. There's a lot of potential in this music, and I think the emotional reaction people have to what we do [comes from those two things]: we're committed to writing good songs and composing good music, and metal is very powerful music."
For Chowenhill, who grew up ravenously consuming all things metal, the genre has always been formative: "For me, there's been this lifelong journey and relationship with metal, and it comes in and out of my life in various ways. As a teenager, I was really into the new wave of British heavy metal and East Bay thrash, just deeply into that, and then I didn't listen to that for a while when I was more into composing other types of music. But the thing that's consistent is that I view a lot of this [music] and these sounds as holistically part of my compositional and playing palette."
For Agriculture, it's all about adapting metal in their own way. Their music has been described as uplifting, even spiritual, and the band have dubbed their sound "ecstatic black metal." There's lots of water and nature imagery, and they position these environmental elements as significant, even holy. They also recognize their place within the pantheon of black metal artists who have embraced the natural world as something beautiful and chaotic and mystical. Gorgoroth comes up, and while we reminisce and laugh about the classic video of former Gorgoroth frontman Gaahl sitting in an isolated cabin in Norway, drinking wine and espousing the merits of Satan as an influence, Meyer also recognizes the inherent power of Gaahl's proclamations.
He notes, "While [the Gaahl video is] funny, there's a clear spiritual element to what [Gorgoroth] and a lot of the other great black metal bands [did and] are doing. And we're drawing on that. I think one of the things that's useful about the black metal toolbox is that, when you hear people playing as fast as they can, and everybody's just blasting and tremolo picking, and someone's shrieking, and it's extended — as a performer and as a listener, I think it pretty easily leads into a spiritual space. It's easy to move in that direction."
Levinson concurs, especially when it comes to Agriculture's lyrical approach. "The writing is often informed by the music and what you do," she says. "Sometimes that means doing what the music might suggest, matching the content with the music, and sometimes it doesn't. And I think, a lot of the time, we're balancing on that wire: this is extreme music, or this is different music, or this is beautiful music, and we're constantly playing with that balance. And so, lyrically, we're thinking: do I want to talk about struggle? Do I want to talk about where I find strength? Do I want to do something a little cheeky here that's funny and draws interest in that way, or do I want to be a little bit more abstract? That's all informed by what's going on musically."
While metal is spoken of with reverence, it is also not infallible. Although it's meant to be a nonconformist genre, with rules that are certainly meant to be broken, metal can also be a fairly conservative genre filled with the worst kind of gatekeeping. Yet in recent years, there has been a definite queering of metal, and Agriculture themselves have been supportive of queer causes and organizations: in 2022, the band put on Circle Fest, billed as a "full-day fest and benefit for trans rights and resources," and when asked about representation and queerness in metal, the band members don't hesitate.
"One thing we found pretty early on, even just playing shows in L.A. or when we play with other bands with queer members, there are more queer people in the audience, and it becomes a more comfortable, safer space for those people to be," Levinson says. "That effect intensifies. And even though we very rarely signal ourselves as a queer band or signal queer politics, a lot of that is very important to me. We really try to put the music and the content of what we're doing first, but at the same time, my visible presence in the band often [lets other] queer people know, like, 'Oh, here's a metal show I can go to. I'm probably not gonna get fucked with for being queer or trans, and there's probably gonna be enough people like me in the crowd that I'll feel comfortable. I won't have to worry about going in the women's bathroom, or I won't have to worry about some transphobe or homophobe.' Because you know that's not going to be so welcome at an Agriculture show. And to me, that's really important."
This freedom — to be and act and sound any way they want — is part of Agriculture's very nature as a band. While black metal is the most recognizable genre within their music, one can't help but be impressed by the diverse sounds that come out of an Agriculture record: screamo, death metal, free jazz, noise, country and folk all make their respective appearances, yet even with all of these genres present, it never feels overbearing. It's maximalist, but also intensely personal and inviting and nuanced. Somehow, it all fits and feels natural. For Agriculture, these juxtapositions, between brutality and calm, are essential.
Levinson mentions the song "In the House of Angel Flesh," a highlight off this year's Living Is Easy EP. She then mentions the influences: blackened screamo labelmates Bosse-de-Nage; Bruce Springsteen; Lavender Country, the first queer country band back in the '70s. "When you write folk or country songs about being queer in San Francisco in the '70s," she says, "it gives you a sense that this has always been there. It's as natural as any other way of living; our queer community is just here. It feels so matter-of-fact in this very grounded way."
She then mentions filmmaker Gregg Araki and his film Nowhere, "which has this really manic energy. And he was very gay, and so I was inspired by this extreme gay manic energy that's very rooted in folk and Americana and rock music, and that's where that song came out." She laughs. "And those are all over the map! But for me, that was the energy and the drive I was going for. That sort of blending of genres and influences just comes from a very natural place."
Influences come and go, but it's Agriculture's unique stamp that leaves the biggest impression. "While it's fun to trace influences," Meyer says, "it's not necessarily an important conceptual element to what we're doing. I think the one person who I mostly listen to is Bob Dylan, and that's just been the case throughout my whole life. And I think he's been such a big influence because he has a very playful relationship with authenticity. You can dance between all of these different styles of songwriting that have been important to you, and in [Dylan's] case, what he had when he was growing up was the Great American Songbook, and jazz standards, and the blues, and the folk revival, and then ultimately rock 'n' roll. And he's really stuck with that! For us, born 50 years later, it's a different pot of music that we're drawing from, but I think that attitude, of using what you've grown up with, is extremely influential for us. And I hope we get to keep doing that."
I concur, because Agriculture is a band whose music is dark and blissful and aggressive and brutal and, of course, ecstatic. It is so many things at once, able to make audiences weep and headbang simultaneously.
Even at its most harrowing, their music embraces the listener, and sometimes, that's the sort of blanket you need — one towering and flooded with distortion, where someone screams at you, not in pain or devastation or hate, but hope. When it's all said and done, Agriculture just want you to enjoy their music as much as they enjoy being in this band.
As Meyer so succinctly puts it, "The origins and continuing story of this band so far has a lot to do with enjoyment. We like to hang out with each other, and we really like sharing this music with people."