Welcome to an experiment. As I write this, my brief take on The Spiritual Sound, the phenomenal sophomore LP from California’s Agriculture, I’m actually listening to their self-titled debut – an album I really, really did not care for. Summoning the joy and fervor the new album gave me while revisiting a debut I found anonymous and cowering behind a wall of bricked production, I began to identify fragments of the things that would fully bloom two years later. I won’t say I’ve come around yet, but man: what a giant leap this album takes – and lands – successfully.

I think.

The reason I have to throw that qualifier in isn’t due to anything to be found within The Spiritual Sound – this is piercing, exploring USBM that comes out from under the wings of Deafheaven to find a ravishing identity all their own. Opener “My Garden” shows off one of the best bass tones I’ve heard all year before exploding in a fury of avant-garde black metal, only to then dive-bomb into a Slipknot nu-metal groove so brutal there should be an umlaut added to their name…

And we’re only 59 seconds into the song.

From there it’s whirlwind of ideas, with primary songwriters and vocalists Dan Meyer and Leah B. Levinson trading furious vocals performances for hazy, psychedelia in an instant. It seamlessly moves into the more blackgaze-driven “Flea” complete with Infinite Granite interludes, but also a fuzzed out guitar solo so rock and roll, so glorious I wish I could have beaten it as a level on Guitar Hero. The first half of the album is intentionally furious, with “Flea” handing the blackgaze baton to “Micah (5:15am)” which manages to inject these tiny, Converge-like metalcore moments that really work as punctuation. It then crashes into the monolithic doom sludge of “The Weight.”

The blackgaze worship continues with “Serenity” but it almost feels like the denouement after the harrowing journey of “The Weight.” It falls into the title track, an ambient noise collage that serves as the intermission between acts.

Where the first side was all fury, the second half opts for a more considered, darker path. It starts with “Dan’s Love Song,” another massive highlight on the album full of them, blending drone, noise, and shoegaze: think more Loveless and Honey’s Dead than Amplifier Worship. The drums of single “Bodhidharma” kick in (Kern Haug’s drumming is incredible throughout) and I remember being bowled over the first time I heard this. I was in Italy, on a bus with 48 other people and just trying to not look out my window at the cliffs and depths below. I played this on repeat all morning as we wound our way up the mountain. The guitar solo on this one…it’s even better than the one on “My Garden”. Richard Chowchilla is a monster. Who knew my favorite solos of the year would come from an Agriculture album?

From there The Spiritual Sound ascends in dirty, Sonic Youth style with “Hallelujah” before gently falling back to Earth with “The Reply” accompanied by Emma Ruth Rundle. I mentioned in the beginning of this that my qualifier had nothing to do with the music or the band; hopefully I’ve made that clear.

Rather, it’s me. I find myself in a place, a place that’s dark and despairing. I took this stuck it in the deck, and pressed play. And as soon as it ended did it again. And again.

There’s no accounting for what soothes your soul. After a year of classic rock, prog, and Japanese jazz, when I fell, it was metal that found me, and helped show that there’s a path ahead.

And if nothing else, the music along the way aims to be really, really good.