LINGUA IGNOTA

2021 AVANTE-BAROQUE/FREAK-FOLK/DRONE

Sinner Get Ready is the fourth full length album from the classically trained banshee Kristin Hayter who performs as Lingua Ignota. I, along with most of the world, became familiar with Hayter’s music from her last release, 2019s Caligula, a piece so visceral and devastating it took me several months to sit down and listen to it front to back, but on that cool autumn night, room bathed in monitor light, all my anxieties washed away while Caligula tore at every fabric of my being with its cathartic vitriol. Naturally my reaction was saying “holy shit” out loud, a futile night of ceiling gazing, into another listen once the sun showed its face. To be more plain it’s a bit of neoclassical, and a lot of noise with the most important ingredient being Hayter’s voice; wretched screams, angelic highs, throaty hums, and the performances my God.

Desperation, conviction, it may be cliché, but each syllable is uttered as if it will be her last. It’s one of the most intense records I’ve ever listened to, for many listeners it will be difficult to get through but to create it, a herculean emotional labor and perhaps an even greater task creating its sequel. Sinner Get Ready retains much of the extremeness, albeit with the abrasion tuned down, and a regular topic on her prior work that now takes center stage, as the album title suggests, Christianity. The raining words of brimstone perfectly fit the grand layered vocals and zealous delivery. Invoking imagery of an anguished woman in torrential rain, brought low by the Lord, head and hands, open palm and rosary, towards Heaven. Sinner Get Ready is a complete revelation. Mass begins with The Order of Spiritual Virgins, pianos and dark synths hang back to let Hayter work her forbidden magic, she flexes her vocal chops while the audience genuflects.

I am relentless, I am incessant, I am the ocean
And all who dare look upon me swear eternal devotion

As with many of the songs there are many harrowing vocal tracks assembled to perfection. There is a beautiful sample at the end, a piece of personal spirituality that resonates with its surroundings. Caligula is most called upon for I Who Bend the Tall Grasses. Hayter reaches back for anguished growls.

I have made my body your vessel
I preach your word in every room
I have walked the earth weeping
I whip my back with my many sorrows
Are my sacrifices not extravagant?

Deep organs salt the earth with the occasional accompaniment of chimes that provide more havoc than hope. The clawing dissonance of Many Hands is the album’s freakish peak, with frantic strings and splintered guitars. And yet it manages to give the Sinner Get Ready version of a chorus,

The Lord spat and held me by my neck
“I would die for you, I would die for you” he wept
The Lord held me by my neck
“I wish things could be different” he wept

Equal parts chilling and irresistible. The next track and lead single, Pennsylvania Furnace, is a sudden but welcome shift. A downright gorgeous track whose serene piano compliments the vocals perfectly, I dare say serene, but you can feel a ghastly shadow always by its side. That sinister presence is, Repent Now Confess Now, which I confess is a low point for me in the listing. Its glacial pace grinds the soul as brilliantly as any composition here but the lyrics with the classic fist pounding rhetoric of its title is overplayed, lacking in the gut punch that Hayter normally strikes with such ease.

The Sacred Linament of Judgement is very reminiscent of the opener with its droning synth and intense religious poetry, the lyrics sound straight from a few hundred year old American/English Christian prose. There’s a great sample running in the undercurrent, a man speaks on the border of weeping; the extra emotional and textural contrast this provides is essential. The next track hits particularly close to home with the Perpetual Flame of Centralia. I’ve been to Centralia multiple times, it’s an abandoned town due to a coal mine fire that has been going on since the sixties. You can see the smoke rising from the ground with the remnants of civilization on all sides, an infernal visualization of Hayter’s more minimal stylings. The vocals and piano are elegant beyond words, comparisons are made among the verses of Hell’s fires to the dull slow burn of Centralia’s underground, its one I’ve heard plenty before but effective nonetheless. A sample about a non-repentant man and a mournful delivery lamenting the evils of men is how Man Is Like A Spring Flower opens. 

One is not enough
No one is enough
No love is enough
The Heart of Man is unbearable to hold

The instrumental starts with familiar pianos, building slowly with strings, backing vocals, castanets, and yet more and yet another bewitching masterpiece. The closer, The Solitary Brethren of Ephrata, Ephrata being a small town amongst the famously pious Lancaster county, is a sorrowful cast off. An ever so topical sample opens of a frustrated woman insisting her immunity to Covid through her faith in Jesus into our album long companion Hayter and her piano, more soulful than ever. 

No longer shall I wander
Ugliness my home
Loneliness my master
I bow to him alone
I bow to him alone

A sendoff fit for the lights of Heaven or Hell. Sinner Get Ready is a tour de force, it cannot be listened to just once, the radiance grows in intensity on each playback. It’s damn near flawless, so much so that I want to find a blemish but any found are nitpicks at best. Creating two impeccable works of art in a lifetime may seem impossible yet Lingua Ignota did so in as many years, handily cementing herself as one of the great. My dearest hope is that she never stops, endlessly drawing from a tortured well to show us all of the majesty and brutality of brilliant art.

 

9-10/10

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