Reviews

Album review: Saint Agnes – Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin

Daredevil London alt.rockers Saint Agnes get bold and industrial-tinted on attention-grabbing third album

SAINT AGNES YOUR GOD FEARING DAYS ARE ABOUT TO BEGIN
Words:
Steve Beebee

Watching a band arriving at its destination is a tasty treat. While Saint Agnes’ early material was difficult to ignore, from its punky goth chaos has come clarity. This new start sees electronic and industrial wizardry honing new songs to sharp and deadly points. The unit’s core, multi-instrumentalist Jon James Tufnell and the stimulating frontal force that is Kitty A Austen, sound rejuvenated. It’s as if they’ve reappraised all they once were, downed a truckload of Nine Inch Nails and emerged, perfectly formed, as this new entity.

While there’s much to like here, the main reason recent videos are getting humungous views is that these unpredictable songs simply ensnare you. Opener Good Boy is all folds of volume, spat out angst and huge guitars that lift you before you letting you fall. Ominously titled, The Father, The Son And The Holy Beast is an interesting mangle of trippy industrial sounds, from electro-pop to brief expulsive rage. Like much here, it runs its own race on its own path, and you want to see how it ends.

Ditto the relatively user-friendly Song For Mia, which Kitty wrote for a childhood friend, and adds increasingly interesting layers of sound. You soon find that you’re the moth and Saint Agnes is the light. The Ghost is perhaps the most complete package, beautiful hooks that intensify, propelling a song that salutes the introverted, the outsiders, the forgotten.

More sombre, Gods Of War seems eerily prescient given that it was surely written long before Trump's latest round of toxicity. 'Supervillains don't wear masks anymore' purrs Kitty before reaching for a despair-lined 'is this the best that we can do?' That's before Get Them Out comes at you with enough firepower to start World War Four, never mind the third instalment.

This, undoubtedly, is the sound of an artist emerging into a new day, a realisation that this catharsis, this pyrotechnic meeting and mangling of genre, is entirely who they are. It's frankly enough of a joy just to look in and witness it.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Poppy, Marmozets, Holy Wars

Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin is out May 29 via Spinefarm

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