If there’s a single word to define Saint Agnes, it’s committed. Two words? Fully committed.

Hailing from the UK, this four-strong outfit are all about honest lyrics, raw vocal performances (delivered by frontperson, Kitty A Austen), plus rage-fuelled music intended to give a voice to those closer to the fringe than the centre.

More gang than band, Saint Agnes (Roman martyr, patron saint of a number of things, including girls) seek to empower those who’ve been battered and bruised yet refuse to lie down, and it’s a thread that runs deep within ‘Bloodsuckers’, Saint Agnes’s second studio album and their first for Spinefarm.

From the title track (also lead single / video) onwards, this is a genre-jumping body of work, taking in elements of metal, punk, industrial and grunge, without being bound by any specific style; the 11 tracks here come straight from the source, largely self-produced and mixed (NIN collaborator Sean Bevan lends his mixing skills to future single / video, ‘Follow You’), and this self-contained approach provides an extra emotional weight throughout, with Kerrang! cover star Mimi Barks further fuelling the chaos on the short, sharp shock that is ‘Body Bag’.

Concludes Kitty: “This is a record for the outsider, the defeated, the crushed. We might be broken, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not whole. Bloodsuckers forever, Saint Agnes forever.”

For fans of Wargasm, Vukovi, Black Honey, Witch Fever.

Available on Trans Red or Red/Black Splatter coloured vinyl.