The spiritual sound of ecstatic black metal is quite a claim for a new band to make, nicely poised on the line between mockery and sincerity. When I first listened to the title track of Agriculture‘s new Living Is Easy EP I’ll admit that the arrival of its stirring Celtic infused guitar line actually made me laugh out loud. It’s so ridiculously epic you can’t really help but smile, once you go with it though it’s amazing, an instant lift, a soaring galvanising rush. Moving swiftly through the black metal forest and uphill, beyond the treeline into the light and on to the summit, the wind rushing clean through you beneath the wide limitless sky. Breathe in, breathe out. Ascend beyond your mortal cage.
‘Living Is Easy’ is not a usual black metal sentiment. Neither is ecstasy if we’re being honest but Agriculture do play black metal and they make it ecstatic without bending it out of shape. That’s not all they do though, ‘Being Eaten By A Tiger’ is a gentle folk rock number that sounds for all the world like Will Oldham. Both relate a Buddhist tale of a young man sacrificing himself so that tiger cubs might have something to eat. As lyrics go being eaten alive by wild beasts is quite metal, but rather than screaming bloody horror there’s a zen calm about it.
‘In The House Of Angel Flesh’ is, if anything, even more exultant than the title track, a charging, rolling onslaught that starts like the fantastic accelerating climax of a song and throws in a few more variations on that as it goes. Taking its name from Larry Mitchell’s gay, seventies, experimental novel The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions and its themes of community in the face of wider cultural pressures, the band interpret the house of Angel Flesh as a symbolic space of healing and support. The song’s own ending repeats to fade beneath a spoken piece that slowly comes to the fore and then recurs unaccompanied as the final track ‘When You Were Born’.
For those of us catching up, Living is Easy comes handily packaged with their debut EP The Circle Chant. A similarly structured four tracks, with epic opener The Circle Chant and ecstatic ripper ‘How To Keep Cool’ interspersed with a sighing vocal experiment (‘Salt’) and a lovely sleepy pedal steel piece (‘The Circle Chant pt2’). The absence of pedal steel is probably my one and only gripe with Living Is Easy, otherwise it’s plain to see how much the band have grown their sound into something more unique and well realised. Alarming mutterings accompany this release suggesting they may have taken this approach to its conclusion, but you’d have to hope there’s at least one more album in it. They arrive in the UK later this year to play Supersonic festival and kick off a European tour. Very much looking forward to it.
