Agriculture

Ecstatic black metal from LA. This is bracing music with extremely fast tempos and crushingly heavy textures. It's also joyous, rapturous, earnest, richly harmonic, immense. The band says they're "inspired by the glory of the ocean." They sound like they're giving everything they've got, as if this music could bring all people back into harmony with the forces of nature. Bassist/vocalist Leah B. Levinson is also a poet and a writer for the wonderful newsletter Tone Glow, and drummer Kern Haug was previously in emo experimentalists Young Jesus. RIYL Deafheaven, Nuvolascura, State Faults, Liturgy, Sumac, Midwife, Botanist. Favorites: 1, 2, 3. No FCCs detected.

1. *(8:08)—Lovely, lonely pedal steel for the first minute. The band crashes in at a molasses-slow tempo, triumphant and gorgeous. Sudden shift to full speed when vocals enter, then to a doomier and scarier passage, then to psychedelic thrash, and finally straight-up black metal again.
2. *(1:55)—Slow. Solo electric guitar and gentle singing. Lonely and pretty, yearning. See the next track for the black metal rendition.
3. *(2:11)—Fast. At full blast from the first second, and stays that way except for five seconds of sax soloing from Patrick Shiroishi.
4. (5:47)—Fast. Again, blast beats from the start. Start/stop drums. Keeps climbing and climbing before a tense mid-tempo breakdown and a slow, dire ending.
5. (6:24)—Fast. More blast beats, fast intertwining guitars. Rises and rises into a crazy roar. All stops, except a lone kick drum, before crashing in again.
6. (6:53)—Fast. Full-tilt blast beats and grand guitars. Intermission with overdriven bass, then back to 11. Fades out. "Outside my window is a tree! I look forward to seeing it in the morning when I rise!"