Update: This show has moved to The End.
If I’m being honest, I’ve always found most black metal to be a little annoying. The guitars sound like a family of gnats stuck in my ear canal, and the shrieking gets on my nerves after about two songs. There are occasional exceptions, but those generally fall into the category of artists who use black metal as a base on which to build something more interesting — abandoning all the usual conventions for grander artistic ambitions. Stuff like Ulver, Panopticon or Liturgy. I’ve recently added Agriculture to the list of BM acts I dig. The L.A. quartet’s 2023 self-titled album is full of nuance and experimentation. Last year’s follow-up LP The Spiritual Sound moves the Aggies even further from USBM (United States black metal) tropes. The high-art compositions on their sophomore full-length would be just as much at home in the Y2K Rhode Island noise-rock scene as they would in the Norwegian scene of the ’90s. Show up for the locals, because the whole show should be stellar. Tennessee death-grind masters Knoll scratch an itch similar to Agriculture, crafting a dissonant metal chaos that shares common musical ground with Sun Ra and Sonic Youth. And Soot’s disharmonious dirges makes them an outlier in Nashville’s roster of heavy bands.
8 p.m. at The End
2219 Elliston Place
