Photo Credit: Math Erao.
On Agriculture’s self-titled record and first full-length LP, it’s abundantly clear that the band’s use of heavy music to showcase the most resplendent emotions and moments of the human experience has a far deeper meaning. Woven between the flurries of soaring tremolo picking, crescendoing guitar harmonies, celebratory screamed vocals, thoughtful improvisation, and meditative atmospheric passages is the record’s mission statement to experience the wonders and joys of both the esoteric and physical world.
From examinations of self-acceptance and identity to depictions of deep communion with nature, the self, and the people we surround ourselves with— highlighted in the band’s latest single— the concepts and thematic questions previously planted by the band have blossomed into powerful, fully-realized artistic and philosophical statements.
An excerpt from the 8-minute-long album opener “The Glory of the Ocean” arrives today with a monochromatic music video. Agriculture comments, “We wanted the visuals for this record generally, and for this music video specifically, to reference both the playful and the sublime. There’s something wonderful and a bit strange about the image of a child doing normal beach things at night. It’s spooky and joyful at the same time. The kid in the video, Dimitri, just absolutely crushed it. He seems to sort of embody a lot of the ideas within the music with how much fun he’s having smashing shit on the beach.”
For something to be “ecstatic,” the feelings and emotions it evokes must transcend what we tend to experience most regularly in our lives. Ecstatic joy isn’t just happiness; it’s a feeling of jubilation which impacts us emotionally and in a metaphysical, arguably spiritual sense too.
Although it has long been associated with connotations of the dark and macabre, extreme music has the ability to be a powerful mode of expression for these feelings of absolute bliss, overwhelming love, and awe-inspiring sublimity. Extreme emotions no less and those which black metal quartet Agriculture evokes with its ecstatic subversion of the subgenre’s tropes.
On Agriculture’s self-titled record and first full-length LP, it’s abundantly clear that the band’s use of heavy music to showcase the most resplendent emotions and moments of the human experience has a far deeper meaning. Woven between the flurries of soaring tremolo picking, crescendoing guitar harmonies, celebratory screamed vocals, thoughtful improvisation, and meditative atmospheric passages is the record’s mission statement to experience the wonders and joys of both the esoteric and physical world.
Through the extreme splendor of ecstatic black metal and the improvisational, experimental, and cathartic elements it embodies, Agriculture illustrates these otherwise incomprehensible questions with a poignant beauty that makes its music as much of an artistic statement as it is a transcendental experience.
Agriculture will be available on physical and digital formats July 21st from The Flenser and is available for pre-order here.
See Agriculture on the road this June:
June 8 – Los Angeles, CA – Permanent Records Roadhouse
June 10 – Las Vegas, NV – The Usual Place
June 11 – Salt Lake City, UT – The International
June 12 – Denver, CO – The Hi-Dive
June 13 – Wichita, KS – The Wave
June 14 – Kansas City, MO – Farewell
June 15 – Oklahoma City, OK -The Sanctuary
June 16 – Austin, TX – The Mohawk for Oblivion Access
June 8 – Los Angeles, CA – Permanent Records Roadhouse
June 10 – Las Vegas, NV – The Usual Place
June 11 – Salt Lake City, UT – The International
June 12 – Denver, CO – The Hi-Dive
June 13 – Wichita, KS – The Wave
June 14 – Kansas City, MO – Farewell
June 15 – Oklahoma City, OK -The Sanctuary
June 16 – Austin, TX – The Mohawk
June 19 – Denton, TX – Andy’s
June 20 – San Antonio, TX – Faust
June 21 – El Paso, TX – The Music Gallery
June 22 – Tucson AZ, – Club Congress
June 23 – Phoenix AZ, – Trunk Space
June 24 – San Diego CA, – Private Location
