Review Summary: Don't be scared.
Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin is an album with attitude, passion, and emotion. Saint Agnes’ third album is 45 minutes of brooding-yet-captivating industrially tinged alternative rock, and it’s a major step up from their prior releases. For all of its praises, however, the album’s front-loaded nature leads to inconsistencies in quality as well as uneven pacing.
For starters, Saint Agnes’ newfound industrial identity is incredibly welcome; as a whole, their sound on
Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin is far more interesting than anything they’ve done in the past. That’s not to say they were a bad band by any stretch of the imagination, but they sound more natural and cohesive than ever on this album. Its most memorable moments come quickly and come frequently, beginning right out the gate with the fiery opener,
Good Boy. The track, and album as a whole, are driven by lead singer Kitty Austen’s confident, impassioned lyricism and vocal performance. As a whole, lyricism is one of
Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin’s major highlights; they range from introspective and mature (such as on
The Beast) to sassy and bold (such as on
The Father, The Son and the Holy Beast). Even listeners who aren’t huge on lyrics will find something to enjoy; one of
Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin’s greatest highlights is
Song For Mia, and that’s not just because of its lyrics. The song begins as a slow-building, mid-tempo industrial-rock track before pulling the rug completely out from under the listener around the two-thirds mark and turning into an unexpected techno banger. The song’s dynamic buildup and incredibly satisfying payoff are similar to that in Nine Inch Nails’ classic,
Closer, which is not a comparison I make lightly. This isn’t the only song either that features impressive instrumental compositions, as the same could be said about
Everything You Denied. Saint Agnes also has a particular knack for delivering satisfying payoffs and conclusions in their songs, as is also the case in the aforementioned
The Father, The Son and the Holy Beast, which has a climactic, glitchy ending that caught me completely off guard in the best way possible.
Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin unfortunately suffers from being incredibly front-loaded; the high level of musicianship found in the album’s first half makes the slower, less captivating back half feel slightly disappointing in comparison. The back half still has its moments, but the questionable decision to include two of the album’s slowest and longest songs (
God Of War and
Where Do I Begin?) so close to each other on the tracklist unfortunately brings the album’s momentum as a whole to a grinding halt. By the time you reach these songs, Saint Agnes will have already proven to you that they’re capable of delivering a thoughtful message with their lyrics without necessarily sacrificing interesting instrumentals and satisfying payoffs, but both of these tracks feel like steps back for the band in this regard. What saves this issue from significantly hampering
Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin’s overall quality is the fact that, in a vacuum, neither of these tracks are awful – they just don’t reach the same level of quality or energy of the album’s highlights.
Fans of anything industrial or alternative would be doing themselves a disservice by skipping out on
Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin. Not only is it Saint Agnes’ best album to date, but it’s a very impressive first foray into a new industrial sound. If you can forgive the album’s weaker half and inconsistent pacing, you’ll find something to adore. Even if the album loses momentum in its back half, Saint Agnes deserves praise for seeming to have discovered the musical identity they’ve been searching for. I look forward to seeing what they cook up in the future.
3.75 out of 5
