SINGLE REVIEW: Repent by Saint Agnes
There may not have been any fireworks displays this year, but if you're still looking to start the new year with a bang, look no further than London based 4-piece Saint Agnes - they're ready to blow away all your January cobwebs with explosive force on their wicked new single Repent.
Taken from their recently announced mini-album, Vampire - due to be released on the 26th of March - Repent is a seething track. Kitty A Austen (vocals) explains: “Repent is a song born of rage. It’s the story of a fallen angel hell-bent on revenge and retribution, and was inspired by being sick to death of people in positions of power getting away with nasty shit again and again and again. I think most people feel it, you look around and it seems like the ‘bad guy’ is always winning, so the song is a blood-thirsty revenge fantasy about righting injustice.” Sounds like perfect timing for the track to be released with everything going on last week, doesn't it?
Sonically, Repent is relentlessly feral. It's thick with gritty riffs and blazing vocals, perfectly encapsulating the rage reflected in the lyrics. Heavier than previous releases, listeners are still invited to lose themselves in a twisted, dark-fantasy western that has become classically 'Saint Agnes'.
The mini album Vampire will see Saint Agnes fire up their vivid storytelling skills once again - physical copies will feature ‘psalms’ - a series of meticulously crafted musical interludes that weave around the album, expanding and enriching the themes as they play out. These guys know how to take real-world ideas and craft them into something dramatic, cinematic, and beautifully fucking heavy. "Humanity can be too much sometimes: too desperate, too evil, to difficult to process, so we like to blur very real-world narratives with larger than life fiction in order to cope with the chaos of it all a little better."
During the pandemic the band have kept busy with the creation of The Quarantine Diaries - a collection of cover songs with their signature dark twist, accompanied by videos filmed on an iPhone in their east London flat during lockdown 1.0. The endeavour received a response from none other than Nick Cave, hailing their reimagining of Grinderman’s No Pussy Blues as "chilling and superior". They also filmed a video for The Meanest Little Kid In Town, a track taken from The Family Strange EP - as well as remixing tracks from PENGSHUi and CLT DRP.
The band insist upon being in charge of all aspects of their work: songwriting, music production, video directing, and artwork creation - which makes for an almost immersive experience, everything is completely their own. See their work in action, check out the video for Repent below:
Listen to Repent on Spotify and Apple Music
Review by Courtney Myers
