Agriculture Setlist

Flea
My Garden
The Weight
Bodhidharma
Hallelujah
Micah (5:15am)
Relier
The Well
Look, Pt. 1
The Reply
Living Is Easy

Agriculture Tour Dates

2/6 – Columbus, OH – The Ace of Clubs
2/7 – Lakewood, OH – Mahall’s 20 Lanes
2/8 – Baltimore, MD – Metro Baltimore
2/10 – Toronto, ON – Longboat Hall
2/11 – Montreal, QC – Bar “Le Ritz” P.D.B
2/12 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
2/13 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom

Black metal is a fringe sub-genre — shrieked vocals, unconventional song structures, and an emphasis on atmosphere. Thematically, I’m most familiar with the bleak, Satanist, plague-focused Scandinavian version of the product. Los Angeles’s Agriculture, in contrast, has carved out a black metal focused on life, suffering, hope, love, and rebirth. Their 2025 album, The Spiritual Sound, sets these extremities in daily life, but also famous Buddhist teachings.

That record had 2025 “best of the year” buzz in metal circles, but I had questions about how its contrasts would play at a sold-out 7th Street Entry. The answer: superbly. Guitarist Richard Chowenhill stepped on to the stage with the house music still playing and turned up “Flea”‘s opening drone to drown it out. The sonic assault came in just as loud as I’d hoped, but the contrasts were also well-rendered. “Bodhidharma”‘s cavernous effects were recreated by Leah Levinson standing a few feet back from the mic. “Hallelujah” was stunning in its simplicity, with members of the band sitting as guitarist / vocalist Dan Meyer played quietly.

Meyer introduced the finale (“Living is Easy”) with emotional remarks about the bravery and care shown by the residents of Minneapolis during historic immigration enforcement clashes over the past few weeks. “This will be remembered as the first city to face American terror and fight back. Thank you for standing up for your neighbors, for standing up for each other, and for standing up for all of us.” I’m not much for tears in public, and certainly not at the 7th Street Entry, but it was heartfelt encouragement, and encouragement we can use right now. I wasn’t the only one having a moment. “Living is Easy” felt hopeful, as its themes of death’s reality (“insects eating my body / I would not be afraid of that”) give way to survival (“I will bury another in the morning light”).

Tennessee’s Knoll got us started, with a generous set of serious riffs and their own study in contrasts — in ways, more shocking and intense than Agriculture, but similarly cathartic and dramatic. A ton of vintage lamps set the mood, and frontman Jamie Eubanks scowled and agonized as he turned knobs, bowed a broken set of wires, and crashed his hands into antique springs — a noisy, esoteric addition to the band’s death metal / grind-core stylings. The climax was a cacophony, with Eubanks briefly placing one of the lightbulbs in his mouth. Whether we were shocked or thrilled, we weren’t bored.