ALBUM REVIEW: Vampire – Saint Agnes

The pandemic has brought into being countless ways for bands to cope with the lack of access to facilities – livestreams aplenty, home-mixed demos released to coincide with Bandcamp Fridays, and more. SAINT AGNES have taken the route of traditional releases, but with a twist – Vampire is the first mini-album release from the rock ‘n’ roll band who brought us Welcome to Silvertown and The Family Strange EP.

SAINT AGNES has been a very exciting new name on the fringes of the rock scene for quite some time, tapping into a riot grrrl attitude, paired with a raw-WHITE STRIPES-esque sound and some spectacularly heavy riffs. Vampire is no exception to SAINT AGNES’s fun and imaginative back catalogue, which explores darker and more sinister themes even as it branches out into catchier and more accessible melodies.

Opening up with lead single Repent, it’s immediately clear this band is not taking any prisoners. Sparse instrumentation leaves the chanted vocal line exposed, immediately recalling the days where we could echo lyrics back to the band whilst in a sweaty mosh. The pop-ier side of SAINT AGNES comes out in Vampire, the band’s fantasy-horror inspired ode to the narcissism of social media addiction – but, more than political agenda and expanding on the weird and wonderful extended universe that SAINT AGNES created with their Goth-Western debut full length Welcome to Silvertown, these songs just slap. This is a brilliantly fun album to listen to on its own, but if you dive deeper into the Psalm interludes and listen to the lyrics, there is more information and story to unpack. The impression we get from this mini-album is that this is a band whose creativity and energy cannot be curtailed by a lockdown. This album hints at the resilience of this band, who need to write and release songs, and above all, make as much noise as possible.

One way in which this irrepressibly restless band has been keeping themselves entertained during lockdown is to record their own cover versions of songs for their YouTube channel, one of which has made it onto the record. It’s a blistering, tongue-in-cheek cover of GRINDERMAN’s No Pussy Blues, which NICK CAVE himself described as “chilling and superior”.

To be blessed with an album as fun and riotous as Vampire with no prospect of live shows in the immediate future is an absolutely criminal tease. We can only hope that with a collection of songs like this, listeners’ appetites will be whetted enough to make SAINT AGNES‘ first gig back one to remember.

Rating: 8/10

Vampire is set for release March 26th via Death or Glory Gang Records.

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