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Agriculture is a Los Angeles–based band channeling ecstatic black metal into something spiritual, grounded, and definitely present. Emerging from the city’s noise scene, the band coalesced into its current form with Dan Meyer, Leah Levinson, Richard Chowenhill, and Kern Haug. Their music fuses the searing intensity of black metal with Zen Buddhist thought, queer history, and devotional songwriting. The result is a sound that resists algorithmic flattening and demands full attention. Their process is rooted in community and persistence: songs are written, dismantled, and rebuilt together. The Spiritual Sound, their new full-length, builds on the radiant extremity of their previous releases and pushes further: music not for escapism, but for confrontation and catharsis. This is not a vibe. It’s a demand.
Since their inception over a decade ago, Uniform has pushed its work in all kinds of directions, unafraid of dismantling what they built and starting again. Their explorations have always come from a natural bent to keep on trying and to realize their ideas more purely each time, often bringing the darkest of nightmares into life in the process. Intimidatingly prolific, the band continues to move like a shark, never stopping for fear of creative death. In 2015, Uniform’s debut LP Perfect World was released on 12XU in the States and ALTER abroad. Following its success they migrated to Sacred Bones, where the critically-acclaimed Wake in Fright (2017) was followed by The Long Walk (2018), further cementing their place at the vanguard of sonic entropy. In the midst of a relentless touring schedule, they joined forces with apocalyptic brethren The Body for a pair of collaborative albums – Mental Wounds Not Healing (2018) and Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back (2019) – as well as the live release, Live at the End of the World (2020). The band took a colossal step forward with their fourth full-length, Shame (2020). Full of neck-snapping riffs, guttural distortion, percussive maelstrom, anguished howls, and spiteful screams towards oblivion, the album follows characters who walk a Sisyphean circle of existential malaise doomed to repeat yesterday’s vices without the promise of a better tomorrow. In 2023, Uniform teamed up with chameleonic doom icons Boris for the collaborative full-length, Bright New Disease. A tidal wave of scathing vocals, ferocious riffs, and psychedelic soundscapes, the album expertly skirts elements of classic Bay Area thrash, Japanese hardcore, and even Bowie-inspired glam. Delving deeper into 2024, the band will soon unleash their magnum opus. Out on August 23, American Standard is a journey of visceral discomfort and brutal honesty, a portrait of sickness and the thrilling transcendence it can bring. Presented alongside a two-drummer rhythmic onslaught and deceptively melodic songcraft, it is Uniform’s most ambitious album to date. From their early days as a chaotic two-piece to their current status as multi-faceted noise veterans with an immense body of work, Uniform have reached a creative point where their aim is entirely personal. As the sonic boundaries have expanded, the band have stuck the knife in deeper. “I’m done with creating surface-level art,” says frontman Michael Berdan. “If it doesn’t kill me a little bit, there’s no point committing to it.”
