Oh, Saint Agnes—the perennial bridesmaids of British rock’s current generation. They’ve got the means of getting big—the right sound; an appealing aesthetic; an acumen for parlaying those into advantageous live slots and festival appearances—but, for whatever reason, it just hasn’t happened for them. Not to the same extent as others, anyway. And when you acknowledge who actually has pipped them to the post, it seems all the more wrong. Even if they’ve never struck as hard as, say, Hot Milk, there are chancers like The Hara rising in the same ballpark who Saint Agnes would handily mop the floor with.
Then again, when the best results for Saint Agnes are achieved through direct, almost immutable comparison, that sets a bar by itself. They can be good, on the proviso that they stay within their bracket and aren’t held in too competitive an arena. Now at their third full-length with that being the case, it’s practically impossible to reason otherwise. But let it not be said that Saint Agnes are lazy, though. Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin tests the waters for something a bit more distinct, not to an alienating level, but to a ‘you-might-not-think-that-this-could-be-literally-anyone’ one.
It’s a good sign overall—making the effort to evolve instead of fruitlessly playing catch-up. Evolution is a process, though, which Saint Agnes are definitely still moving through on here. These are the stylistic pillars of alt-chic edgecore, after all, remaining functionally unchanged and equally as unremarkable. Even if Saint Agnes are better at not treating ‘goth’ as a costume to don, devoid of cultural significance, it’s not not here. At its best, The Ghost’s total submission to style makes for a club-ready throbber that’s easy to get gripped by. Less great is Good Boy, so-called to condescend upon ‘free-thinking’ men whose entire brand is subservience to the capitalist grist-mill, but, y’know…it’s called Good Boy. Read into that if you want; plenty will.
Sit any of that next to some of the more flagrantly shallow aesthetes doing the rounds, though, and Saint Agnes are far from the worst offenders. Their execution, for example, actually feels like something more their own. In beats and moments, it’s close to being an update on a band like Hole, where a Gen X sneer is encased in the solid, profoundly modern shell of the catch-all ‘alternative’. At their core, songs like Everything You Denied and The Blood Beat (Angel In The Marble) are rooted in ‘90s operating procedures, in the mélange of alt-rock, grunge and punk clad in a harder, sleeker shell. With Kitty A. Austen as a more expressive, less regimentedly ‘standard’ singer for this scene, you can see how deeply Saint Agnes’ desire to be more runs.
Nowhere is that more apparent than on Your God Fearing Days…’ slower, more patient moments, the deliberate antithesis to the all-gas, all-teeth approach of many in Saint Agnes’ sphere. Structure and tightness finds itself ditched almost entirely on The Father, The Son And The Holy Beast and Gods Of War. Instead, they’re more free-flowing, both in their exploration of industrial soundscapes and in how Austen’s delivery leans into the lack of walls. Even if they’re more memorable for being here than what they do (particularly Gods Of War for how much of it is taken up by negative space), they’re different enough to matter regardless.
That’s kind of where the best impulses of Saint Agnes rest right now, overall. Your God Fearing Days… is far from a landmark release as a collection of songs, but its insistence on budging the needle makes it an important piece of Saint Agnes’ lineage by default. That’s true even when acknowledging there’s still a foot in the overly-familiar about it (or how a song like Get Them Out with its bricked-out production fully hops back over). It’s undoubtedly transitional in that regard, but gives enough glowing hints towards what it’s transitioning into to warrant a pass. Perhaps Saint Agnes are finally on the road to getting their flowers after all.
For fans of: Dead Pony, Lake Malice, Knife Bride
‘Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin’ by Saint Agnes is released on 29th May on Spinefarm Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
