"THE SPIRITUAL SOUND" captures Agriculture’s fearless collision of metal, indie rock, and post-rock into a raw, transcendent statement of belief and survival.

On The Spiritual Sound, Los Angeles band Agriculture fuse ecstatic metal, post-rock patience, and indie-rock rawness into a towering, faith-charged vision that’s as messy as it is transcendent. Unafraid to let distortion, imperfection, and sincerity coexist, the album stands as one of 2025’s boldest metal statements—music that understands both spiritual yearning and earthly survival.(Metal)

The title of The Spiritual Sound is like a list of what the music of Agriculture's all about. They want to make music that's like The Spiritual Sound. You will hear things that remind you of metal songs, the kind that start with a big shock and make you feel like something crazy is happening. The music is also like the work of Scott Walker, where the sound is big and scary like something from the Bible. Then there are parts that're slow and build up to something big like post-rock music, where they wait a long time to get to the best part and it feels really good when they finally do. The music of Agriculture is, like The Spiritual Sound it has a lot of sounds from different kinds of music. The old songs from the nineties indie rock records were really good. They could have been hits if they sounded a little better. I love it when the guitar part kicks in on a Slipknot song. This mix of styles is not about being different. Like having soft singing and loud screaming or nice melodies and weird noises. It is also, about keeping the parts that're not totally clean or totally dirty. The messy parts make the loud and crazy parts sound better. The indie rock records and the Slipknot songs have a sound when they are mixed together. The indie rock records have a feel that is preserved when they are mixed with the Slipknot songs.

The Spiritual Sound is one of the daring metal albums of 2025. This is because the people in the band Agriculture really understand themselves. The band is from Los Angeles. They are very honest about what they believe in. They know that they have to make money to keep their band going. The people in Agriculture want to make sure they can pay their bills.

Guitarist Dan Meyer said something very interesting in an interview. He said that the job of the band is to sell things like T-shirts. The way they promote these T-shirts is, by playing music for people to hear. Agriculture is a band that knows how to make music and sell T-shirts at the time. If we were talking about money that is the way it is. The people who made this music do not get their ideas from the things, like genre or making themselves sound special. They get their ideas from the things that happen every day. This makes their music feel real and honest. This album has some scary and violent parts but it also has a sweet song called "Dans Love Song". The song says "I will always love you" and it sounds like they really mean it.

Agriculture started out as a band that called themselves an " black metal band". They did some unusual things like putting these really sweet and emotional two minute songs at the beginning of their albums. You can hear this on their album that came out in 2023, which is also called Agriculture and on their EP called Living Is Easy that came out in 2024.. Now that they have a second full album out it is clear that Agriculture has changed into something totally different. They are the kind of band that can sound completely different, from one song to the next. You can still tell that it is Agriculture. The Spiritual Sound was made by Richard Chowenhill who plays the guitar. This music is really good. It lasts for 44 minutes. The Spiritual Sound has a lot of energy. The songs, on The Spiritual Sound go back and forth between the ones that Meyer sings and the ones that Leah Levinson sings. Meyer usually talks about things in a way. The Spiritual Sound is special because Meyer is straightforward. Leah Levinson sings about ideas and things that happen in the world. The Spiritual Sound has a mix of songs because of this.

These vocalists have a way of putting their heart into every moment. They can be really loud and crazy like when they scream in some songs.. They can be soft and quiet like when they sing in a high voice and it gets all fuzzy and dreamy like the music of My Bloody Valentine. In the song "Hallelujah" Meyer just lets it all out and sings with his voice it is like he is inviting the whole crowd to join in and sing along with him like a singer-songwriter who steps back, from the microphone. When Agriculture play with metal structures like the opening song "My Garden" they use a loose verse-chorus pattern.. Then Agriculture interrupt themselves with scene-setting textures and bursts of ambience. This is like a stage between sets, in a play.

Agriculture stand out because they mix music styles together. This is a time when death metal bands are trying things and hardcore bands are using pop music.. Agriculture make all these different sounds work well together. It feels like these sounds were always meant to be. Agriculture make their music sound proudly coherent.

This music is really nice. It helps the musicians make new and exciting songs like the six-minute song "Bodhidharma." The song "Bodhidharma" is very interesting it has a lot of parts sometimes it is very loud and heavy and sometimes it is very quiet with soft singing. The musicians pair a heavy riff with quiet and spooky sounds and whispered vocals, in the song "Bodhidharma”. This music is really serious. "You look like you're dying" is what Levinson screams at the beginning with only a drum beating in the background and Music like Music does not get any lighter after that. But Music is also a lot of fun it is very vivid and colorful. It will probably be a big hit for a long time. When the band plays live there are moments when the only person playing's drummer Kern Haug and you can tell that the other musicians, in the band are getting ready for the Music to get even louder and more exciting.

The music of this band is really creative. They do not want you to get too used to one style. So they make sure the words to their songs are just as interesting and varied as the music itself. The person who writes the words, Levinson has said that he was influenced by David Wojnarowicz, who wrote about the AIDS crisis in a honest way. When you look at the words to their songs you see that they are about things like pets and friends and prayers. This makes their music feel like it is about the people and things that are important to them. The music is like a way to remember their community and the people, in it. These people are really good at keeping things real. They also love a good metal phrase. The line "Death is the fucker" is something that I think would sound really cool if Metallica or Harvey Milk said it. When Levinson screams this line in "My Garden" with his teeth clenched it is like the beginning of something. It is the start of the ideas about loss and perseverance that come later. The metal music and the words that Levinson says set the tone for the rest of the song. The line "Death is the fucker" is a metal one-liner that really gets your attention and makes you want to hear more, about what metal music is saying.

When I listen to a record and the words are really hard to understand I usually do not spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they mean.. Agriculture is different. The people who make Agriculture want us to really think about the words and listen carefully. They want us to understand what they are trying to say. The song "Bodhidarma" is an example of this. At the end of the song they talk about an idea from Zen Buddhism. It is an extreme idea. It is, about a student who cut off his arm to show how much he cared about what his teacher was saying. Agriculture makes me want to listen to their music closely and think about what the words really mean. There are a lot of bands that might really like this story because it is about self-destruction.. On The Spiritual Sound self-destruction is just one example of how people suffer.

The album ends with a beautiful song called "The Reply". This song is about a guy who's alone, on the beach thinking about World War I. The guy is singing with Emma Ruth Rundle. When he tells his story it is not exciting or happy. He does not talk about winning or losing he just tells what happened. The Spiritual Sound is an album that shows how people suffer. The Spiritual Sound does this in a very simple way. But even when lost in thought, Agriculture show us how the waves keep coming.

Mason Morgan