"Caligula", Kristin Hayter aka Lingua Ignota's last full length (and one of my absolute favorite albums of 2019) was - still is! - an emotionally devastating, unfathomable colossus of wrath and punishment, combining the harshness of her debut "All Bitches Die" with baroque neo-classical ideas and pushing those to the most glorious and hideous extremes.
With such an outstanding landmark in its neck there's no way of reviewing her newly released double album without drawing comparisons to its predecessor.
Yet due to the range displayed in her smaller digital releases since then, but also owed to the toll performing the material live took on her voice - plus her coming out of an operation against her chronical back pain - made it seem very likely that she would change the direction of her project to a more... let's say sustainable format.
The first two singles, both grand, hauntingly beautiful compositions centered around Hayter's piano and clean singing voice, strongly confirmed that assumption.
Accompanied by stunning videos "Pennsylvania Furnace" and "Perpetual Flame Of Centralia" also did a great job of introducing the setting and central themes of the album.
However they are also purposely misleading, if you think you can build your expectation for the style of the whole album on them. Oh no, get ready for more...
LINGUA IGNOTA - Sinner Get Ready (red in clear vinyl 2LP) (2021)
After the first single it already feels redundant to mention that "Sinner Get Ready" was inspired by Kristin Hayter staying in Pennsylvania during the pandemic. Furnace is a Pennsylvanian community and the song title "The Solitary Brethren Of Ephrata" features a biblically named Amish city also located in that state.
Nevertheless the central key location, which offers us a manifold metaphor for the understanding as well as the placement of this album within Lingua Ignota's dicography, has to be Centralia.
Nevertheless the central key location, which offers us a manifold metaphor for the understanding as well as the placement of this album within Lingua Ignota's dicography, has to be Centralia.
The area in and around Centralia is a largely abandoned lost place. I don't know how it really looks there, but one can imagine a calm and a certain beauty of nature reclaiming its place. Though under the deceptive surface of silence burns a fire.
It's a literal fire which broke out in a coaling mine under the borough of Centralia in the 1960s, an actual perpetual flame which is expected to last for up to 250 years. So according to recent scientific projections mankind will probably not survive long enough to watch it die out.
While the road through Centralia has recently been renewed (probably parallel to the early conception of "Sinner Get Ready") older pictures show huge fissures in it, through which smoke and life-threatening gases leaked out.
The raging fire at its prime was "Caligula".
It's a literal fire which broke out in a coaling mine under the borough of Centralia in the 1960s, an actual perpetual flame which is expected to last for up to 250 years. So according to recent scientific projections mankind will probably not survive long enough to watch it die out.
While the road through Centralia has recently been renewed (probably parallel to the early conception of "Sinner Get Ready") older pictures show huge fissures in it, through which smoke and life-threatening gases leaked out.
The raging fire at its prime was "Caligula".
In the same picture "Sinner Get Ready" is Centralia. At first sight a scene of sparse melancholy, yet with an all the more unsettling underbelly.
Lingua Ignota paints rural Pennsylvania as a morbid place shaped by the firm grip of religious beliefs. That old destructive fire, which man was always drawn to, burns in a particular American way here, shaping the inner and outer reality of societies and souls with a strictness and totality which is hard to grasp at least from my thankfully very heathenish Northern German point of view.
Hayter's lyrics are appeal and condemnation of the Pennsylvanian God. They are personal and part of a bigger conceptual field at the same time, with each and every line being written as a powerful quotable statement or invocation.
Just as I did at the beginning of my review for "Caligula" I could easily recite a whole bunch of lyrical excerpts here, but what is probably more useful to highlight the different nature of "Sinner Get Ready" is a list of several instruments being used by the singer and her collaborators Ryan Seaton and Seth Manchester alongside the piano.
Lingua Ignota paints rural Pennsylvania as a morbid place shaped by the firm grip of religious beliefs. That old destructive fire, which man was always drawn to, burns in a particular American way here, shaping the inner and outer reality of societies and souls with a strictness and totality which is hard to grasp at least from my thankfully very heathenish Northern German point of view.
Hayter's lyrics are appeal and condemnation of the Pennsylvanian God. They are personal and part of a bigger conceptual field at the same time, with each and every line being written as a powerful quotable statement or invocation.
Just as I did at the beginning of my review for "Caligula" I could easily recite a whole bunch of lyrical excerpts here, but what is probably more useful to highlight the different nature of "Sinner Get Ready" is a list of several instruments being used by the singer and her collaborators Ryan Seaton and Seth Manchester alongside the piano.
Where "Caligula" - especially during its heaviest parts - relied a lot on samples and a rather fragmentary nature, the new album is a much more tangible and traditional affair with a mostly stripped down tapestry of actual instruments performing compositions between American folk, gospel and a more primal, universal worship music.
The naturalistic aspect of this is materialized with banjo, bells, bowed banjo, cello, clarinet, frame drums, guitar, harmonica, mandolins, melodicas, mountain dulcimer, organ, pennywhistle, saxophones, saxophone neck, shruti box, singing bowl, tibetan cymbals, triangels, wooden flute, wooden shakers, woodwind mouthpieces... while synths add further layers of atmosphere and drone.
Interestingly there are parts of the album - take the instrumentals of "Many Hands" or "The Sacred Linament Of Judgement", where the combination of drones, plucked and bowed strings and percussion sounds very reminiscent to thekind of Asian experimental music I'm drawn too lately. Especially Senyawa's masterpiece "Alkisah" finds a surprising relative and counterpart here.
Albeit coming from a culturally very different place, there's a shared sense of anachronism at work, which connects Hayter's twisted americana with the neubautish take on Indonesian folk, even though Lingua Ignota lives in a much bleaker reality.
As she takes us through this misogynic religious world, which is spiritually not too far from the barn where Tori Amos once infamously nursed a piglet, it is noteworthy, how brilliantly her journey is structured.
Side A is the prologue and challenge, which you have to overcome, as "The Order Of Spiritual Virgins" seems to drag out into eternity and "I Who Bend The tall Grasses" finds Kristin screaming into our faces with unforgiving intensity, not as black metal influenced as on "Caligula", but in a much more "real" and similarily frightening way.
The next two sides are the main act, which features more archaic darkness, the harsh dark gospel of "Repent Now Confess Now", as well as the balladic grandeur of the two singles.
The naturalistic aspect of this is materialized with banjo, bells, bowed banjo, cello, clarinet, frame drums, guitar, harmonica, mandolins, melodicas, mountain dulcimer, organ, pennywhistle, saxophones, saxophone neck, shruti box, singing bowl, tibetan cymbals, triangels, wooden flute, wooden shakers, woodwind mouthpieces... while synths add further layers of atmosphere and drone.
Interestingly there are parts of the album - take the instrumentals of "Many Hands" or "The Sacred Linament Of Judgement", where the combination of drones, plucked and bowed strings and percussion sounds very reminiscent to thekind of Asian experimental music I'm drawn too lately. Especially Senyawa's masterpiece "Alkisah" finds a surprising relative and counterpart here.
Albeit coming from a culturally very different place, there's a shared sense of anachronism at work, which connects Hayter's twisted americana with the neubautish take on Indonesian folk, even though Lingua Ignota lives in a much bleaker reality.
As she takes us through this misogynic religious world, which is spiritually not too far from the barn where Tori Amos once infamously nursed a piglet, it is noteworthy, how brilliantly her journey is structured.
Side A is the prologue and challenge, which you have to overcome, as "The Order Of Spiritual Virgins" seems to drag out into eternity and "I Who Bend The tall Grasses" finds Kristin screaming into our faces with unforgiving intensity, not as black metal influenced as on "Caligula", but in a much more "real" and similarily frightening way.
The next two sides are the main act, which features more archaic darkness, the harsh dark gospel of "Repent Now Confess Now", as well as the balladic grandeur of the two singles.
The albums biggest surprise however may come in the finale before it fades out with the false peace of "The Solitary Brethren Of Ephrata":
"Man Is Like A Spring Flower" is a multi-layered, almost orchestral piece, yet brought to life with "prepared piano", Moog Grandmother, Moog Voyager, Korg Wavestation, FM8 Soft Synth, Roland TB-303, Wurlitzer etc.
No, my familiarity with these tools is limited, but the effect clearly is a surprising introduction of a whole new palette of sounds, as if suddenly the recording studio had turned into a krautrock laboratory inhabited by a contempory classical composer, which in combination with Hayter's voice ascedning to its most operatic mode, opens the album up a lot and takes it to a whole new, unexpected level.
"Man Is Like A Spring Flower" is a multi-layered, almost orchestral piece, yet brought to life with "prepared piano", Moog Grandmother, Moog Voyager, Korg Wavestation, FM8 Soft Synth, Roland TB-303, Wurlitzer etc.
No, my familiarity with these tools is limited, but the effect clearly is a surprising introduction of a whole new palette of sounds, as if suddenly the recording studio had turned into a krautrock laboratory inhabited by a contempory classical composer, which in combination with Hayter's voice ascedning to its most operatic mode, opens the album up a lot and takes it to a whole new, unexpected level.
"Sinner Get Ready" is an amazing work of art from start to finish, and its packaging does it justice. With photographs by Hayter herself, the gatefold cover perfectly captures the mood of the musical narration.
Available in various vinyl colours, I find the red in clear variant to be very complimentary to the artwork.
Available in various vinyl colours, I find the red in clear variant to be very complimentary to the artwork.
All in all "Sinner Get Ready" has no reason to hide from "Caligula". It may be less punishing, it doesn't have the scary jump scares and such, but it is equally as profound and somehow horryfying. And probably even more cohesive as a complete work of art.
A masterpiece and strong AOTY contender. Period.
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