Feb 4

Feb 4 Review: Agriculture at Eulogy

I’m a pretty calm person. Though I spent much of my youth at punk and hardcore shows, I’ve found myself less inclined toward overtly aggressive music as I’ve gotten older. Even when I do crave something heavy, it’s usually the slower, dronier pockets of noise rock that I seek out. All of which is to say: I’m rarely in the mood for metal.

Agriculture, however, won me over through the slower, more ethereal passages in the second half of its 2025 album The Spiritual Sound. “Dan’s Love Song” is about as close to My Bloody Valentine’s perfect combination of brutally loud and dreamy that another band has achieved.

That said, at Eulogy on Jan. 28, it was the Los Angeles quartet’s most blaring sonic assaults that really hit the spot. The fits of auditory rage in songs like “Micah (5:15 AM)” and “Flea” felt uncannily aligned with the experience of trying to remain a decent human in the U.S. right now. Most of us are likely carrying around an unhealthy amount of bottled-up anger, and watching Agriculture totally sonically combust in a packed room felt genuinely cathartic.

Where many heavy bands maintain a relentless full-throttle attack, Agriculture’s wide dynamic range makes their loudest moments hit even harder. Nowhere was this quality more apparent than during “Bodhidharma.” The song opened with a crushing surge of riffs before the guitars abruptly dropped out, leaving only a fractured drumbeat and Leah B. Levinson’s raw, screaming vocals. Levinson then pivoted to hushed, aching delivery against the relative auditory void before the band surged back into a full wall of sound, repeating the cycle. Strangely enough, those stripped-back moments — just a lone beat and fragile vocals — felt like the heaviest of the entire set. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense: they captured the sensation of being utterly crushed under the weight of hopelessness.

Amid all that visceral noise, there’s an undercurrent of optimism in Agriculture’s music and ethos. That positive outlook came through when one of the vocalists spoke about recent events, noting that life on the road — city to city, night after night — has reinforced the belief that there are “more of us than there are of them.”

Agriculture’s powerful headlining set was preceded by performances from local post-punk trio Secret Shame and Tennessee-based grindcore outfit Knoll. Secret Shame — recently recalibrated after the departure of its longtime bassist, and Nathan Landolt’s shift from drums to guitar — may have seemed like an unlikely opener for two metal acts, but even without a live drummer and with vocalist Lena clearly fighting to preserve her voice, they held their own in front of a packed house.

Knoll, the heaviest act of the night, threatened to swallow Eulogy whole. Performing on a nearly pitch-black stage lit only by a pair of lamps, vocalist James Eubanks unleashed a torrent of guttural growls and shrieks that bordered on mass exorcism. His resemblance to Max Schreck’s Nosferatu — complete with long, sharpened nails — only heightened the unease. Still, it was Eubanks’ sheer vocal endurance that proved most impressive; my own throat felt shredded just imagining attempting that level of sustained brutality.

Heavy music thrives in times like these — and for many, it’s essential for survival. This show felt like a powerful reminder of that truth.

(Photos by Jonny Leather)