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We caught up with Richard from Agriculture to talk band origins, tour favorites, and the layered influences behind their sound.
We're Agriculture, based in LA. We got started around 2021, an organic process that came together during pandemic lockdown.
Dan, our other guitar player and one of our singers, and Kern, our drummer, met through the free improv and noise scene here in LA. Dan had just moved back from Joshua Tree and had gotten really into black metal, wanting to start a black metal project. Kern wasn't deeply versed in metal but liked the drumming style, so the two started jamming and workshopping ideas together.
Around the same time, I moved back to LA after nine years in Boston for grad school. I'm originally from Northern California, but Kern and I actually know each other from undergrad, about 20 years ago, when we lived together. When I got back, I was giving Kern audio engineering lessons (I used to be a professor and retired from academia a few years back, but I run a studio here and produce all our records). While reconnecting, he mentioned he'd been jamming with Dan and asked if I'd want to play lead guitar. He knew I'd grown up deep in metal since my teenage years in the East Bay, so I came to a rehearsal and it clicked immediately.
Our original bass player eventually left, and the guys knew Leah from the scene and suggested we bring her in. She turned out to be fantastic. Dan wasn't sure he wanted to handle vocals full-time, and Leah, who has this amazing metal scream, stepped in. Now she sings most of our material, especially the harsh vocals.
It all came together organically over several months while we worked on our first record and EP, people from the same scene who'd each brought real experience: Kern, Leah, and I had all toured extensively in other bands, I'd made tons of records as a producer and engineer, and Leah, Dan, and I studied music in school, while Kern came up through performance itself.
AG: We've got a few favorites. In Europe, we love playing in Italy. The audiences are so fun and generous, they just love to chat and tell jokes. The first time we played in Italy, at a great spot in Bologna, we actually had to ask the crowd to simmer down between songs because they kept shouting out record recommendations at us mid-set. It's such a friendly vibe. Paris has also been great the last few times we've played there.
In the US, obviously we love LA because we're from here, but Dan and I are both from the Bay Area and Kern lived there for a while too, so Bay Area shows, whether it's Oakland or San Francisco, are always a great audience. We played a sold-out show in San Francisco in November with a lot of familiar faces. Portland has also been good to us. We've played Mississippi Studios a few times, and the audiences and the people working there are always fantastic.
"There's something about a metal band shirt with a deer on it that embraces nature in a fun way and softness in a cool way, even while still feeling intense."
AG: So much of our pre-show ritual is just loading in and making sure everything's set. Leah has her own way she likes to set up the merch, and I've got my way of setting up amps and pedals. It's a good way to quickly get familiar with a new space and know who's doing what behind the scenes.
As far as personal ritual, I like to warm up a little on guitar backstage or in the green room. I do a lot of sweating on stage, so I like to fill up on electrolytes beforehand, a banana or some coconut water. If it's a new city and we've got time, I'll take a short walk around the neighborhood beforehand, just to get a sense of where we are.
AG: I have a hat I bought from Boris when we were supporting them on tour. It's from their pink album, kind of a maroon color, and I think it looks good on me, and it's in a bunch of the videos I've posted for brands I work with. It reminds me of cool people and a great tour, and I think they just nailed the design. It's simple, but perfect the way they did it.
The other one I really like is from Knoll, a band who did direct support for us on our most recent run through the states. They call themselves Tennessee Grindcore, and they have this shirt with a picture of Dolly Parton holding a rifle in a Victorian-style frame, with "Tennessee Grindcore" below it. Really cool.
AG: This is something we talk about sometimes for fun in the van. There are so many, it's hard to choose, since each of us has our own thing. Dan is a big Bob Dylan guy, Leah is really into Lou Reed, Kern is a big Sun Ra guy, and I love Van Halen and a lot of Swedish melodic death metal from the 2000s. But as far as common ground, in terms of what we listen to together in the van, I think we'd all be really happy to do a collaboration with Miles Davis.
AG: I had a composition professor once tell a small group of us that at any given time, your artistic style as a composer is just an amalgamation of everything you've ever listened to. I think that's true, especially once you've got enough decades of listening under your belt, you end up calling on things you haven't listened to in years without even realizing it.
To answer more concretely, each of us has our own things we were buzzing on while making our last record, The Spiritual Sound. For me personally, it was a combination of Children of Bodom, the Finnish melodic death metal band I listened to a lot when I was younger, and 20th-century avant-garde classical composers, Ligeti and George Crumb, both of whom wrote string quartets with really intense, noisy, chromatic violin parts. I love the density and richness of those compositions, and some of that found its way into the guitar solos and leads I wrote and played throughout the record; a combination of 2000s metal and 20th-century avant-garde classical that was bouncing around my head.
AG: Recently, my favorite has been our hat. We'd wanted to do one from the beginning, and I think it looks great, simple and straightforward, but also kind of elegant and fun.
Two others that really hit for me include the shirt with the quote "I Love the Spiritual Sound of Ecstatic Black Metal by the Band Agriculture," it's cheeky and still makes me laugh, and I love seeing people wearing it around LA or sending pictures of themselves in it from wherever they are. And then the long sleeve with a deer on the front, which is really popular right now. The designer nailed it: the image, the lettering placement, all of it. There's something about a metal band shirt with a deer on it that embraces nature in a fun way and softness in a cool way, even while still feeling intense.
AG: The rules around throwing things have changed a lot over the last 20 years, so it's less common than when I was a teenager playing in clubs. Nothing weird comes to mind recently, but something that's been really charming lately is bubbles. There's a bubble blower who's shown up consistently at our last couple of shows in New York. She's usually a few people back from the stage, and I'll just be playing and suddenly see bubbles cross my eyeline. It's fun.
AG: I think it'd be "Jam Flow Man." All of us have been trying to understand jam band music. Our friends in Chat Pile, who we've toured with a few times, are really into it, and none of us historically have been. We started with Grateful Dead, then tried to get into Phish, and at some point came across this song called "Jam Flow Man," which is really silly and also just peak. It started as a joke, but now we all have our favorite parts in it, and it's one of those songs that makes everybody feel good, even if we're laughing the whole time.
AG: Coachella would be great. It's local for us, since all of us are in California, so there's an autobiographical thing there. It'd be great to do that legendary California festival.
Published:
September 3, 2026
