Agriculture / Machukha / Healing Wound @ Dust, Brighton, 4th September 2025

Now that the festival season is coming to an end, and (hopefully) so are the heatwaves and mosquito bites, the gigs are finally back. We get to return to our favourite local venues to enjoy the best bands around and check in our friends in bands. That’s the spirit that animated all of us who were at Dust on a sunny Thursday evening.

This venue has the particularity of being just seconds away from the beach, yet also situated next to a gentlemen’s club. You can imagine the fun conversations that can come from a place like this. But no stripping music was heard that evening, only bleak and cacophonic noise coming from three different, but equally fantastic bands: Agriculture, Machukha and Healing Wound.

Let’s start with Healing Wound, our very own post-hardcore outlet. It must have been the third or fourth time I’ve seen these lads, and I have to admit, they keep getting better and better over time. The energy is incredible, they play loud, fast and well. By the third song, the crowd becomes less shy as you can see a few bopping heads here and there.

Lots of new songs off their upcoming debut album, some of them sound very much like early Converge or The Dillinger Escape Plan, some others have a post-metal vibe to them that is hard to ignore if you are into that kind of noise (I know I am, and I hope you will too). What we’ve heard from them so far is very promising, and if I were you, keep your eyes open for their debut album dropping early 2026.

A vape break later, it is time for Machukha to enter the tiny Dusk stage for their first-ever show in Brighton (and only their second in the UK). They took no time to make us feel cosy inside. From the start, the Berlin-based band is giving us icy cold, cathartic post-black metal, devilish hardcore blast beats, and banshee wails in both English and Ukrainian. Seeing them live felt like you were on your way down the river Styx or worse, a delayed Southern Rail train that is two stations away from being completely cancelled, and yet, it was nearly impossible not to smile and relish it.

It’s harsh, visceral, completely spellbinding and gnarly all at once, the kind of experience that makes you think ‘what in the fucking tarnation did I just witness? That was fucking amazing!’ I don’t know who needs to hear what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it anyway: listen to Machukha, tell your friends about Machukha, tell your promoter friends to make them play in your neck of the woods. You’ll thank me later.

Another vape break later, the Brighton crowd was ready for Agriculture. The self-professed ‘ecstatic’ black metallers from California are also wasting no time with niceties. Just enough vaseline to get through our ears and psyche to enjoy the set. Alternating between emotional Americana ballads and fury, Agriculture impressed the tight-knit crowd faster than it takes a normie to spell Bodhidharma. Drummer Kern Haug was particularly frantic behind his kit, offering us not one but two great drum solos, making the set even heavier than it already was.

Speaking of Bodhidharma, it is clear that this song is becoming a fan favourite, given that it was received with cheers, applause and loud claps, as guitarist/singer Richard Chowenhill sang his heart out the entire time, feeling like a suspended moment in time before chaos ensues. In other words, our flabbers were gasted. Agriculture provides us with constant joy, which is a feat in itself when you are in a black metal band and the word ‘ecstatic’ is definitely not used in vain as far as they are concerned. Their sound is as raw and violent as it can be, but not in a threatening way; it invites you, it allows you to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and in this day and age, that is very much needed.

This Brighton show will absolutely be one for the books as we are embracing the return of autumn and the bitterly cold weather that usually comes with it. Yeah, I hope they will be back soon, it was that spectacular.

Scribed by: Nessie Spencer