A bold opening statement by Kristin Hayter, better known by her Latin stage name Lingua Ignota (meaning ‘unknown language’), as we’re introduced to her new album Sinner Get Ready. From the first buzzing synth note of the nine-minute epic that is ‘The Order of Spiritual Virgins’, to the fading piano-accompanied vocals that close out ‘The Solitary Brethren of Ephrata’, one word can be used to describe this listening experience: intense.
Whilst Lingua Ignota’s previous release Caligula focused heavily on matters of domestic abuse, Sinner Get Ready instead sees Hayter channelling her interests and experiences with religion, “an unsettling portrait of devotion and betrayal, judgement and consequence”. Set to a deeply rural Pennsylvania backdrop, inhabited by old testament God-fearing Christians, Sinner Get Ready explores the sparse landscape and tells tales of eerie cult-like figures as well as weaving threads of personal tragedy into the overarching themes.
Tracks such as ‘Many Hands’, ‘Repent Now, Confess Now’ and ‘The Sacred Linament of Judgement’ offer vocal melodies that seem to carve out their own path as though all or any of the music beneath them were purely coincidental. Their cult-like chants drip heavy with mentions of ‘the blood of Jesus Christ’. Musically, these tracks are reminiscent of or sound as though they could have been lifted from an occult film score – Mark Korven’s soundtrack to ‘The VVitch’ springs to mind, another story that also just happens to be set in New England.
Moving away ever so slightly from the chilling clanging of bells, chanting, banjos and avant-garde instrumentals, ‘Pennsylvania Furnace’ and ‘Perpetual Flame of Centralia’ opt for a much more traditional vocal and piano combination. Both are sombre, melancholy and minimal but as Hayter croons ‘mine is the venom of the snake of Eden’ on the latter, there’s an air about it that would suit the misunderstood lament of a classic villain, albeit in a way more deeply contemporary.
In complete contrast to the minimalism or industrious sparsity of the aforementioned tracks, ‘I who Bend the Tall Grasses’ once again explores new territories. Sounding like a séance taking place in a small church, it uses dichotomies of ecclesiastical prayer and church organs, overlaid with harsh, possessed-sounding screams. An amalgamation more than worthy for a song that’s an unhinged POV prayer, begging for the death of an enemy.
Although Sinner Get Ready is drenched in biblical iconography and visions of devout, pastoral landscapes, it’s also equally viscous and relentless, flitting between industrial, experimental noise, church-worthy hymns and traditional modern-classical compositions. Once again, Lingua Ignota has served up an uncompromising, genre-defying slab that, somewhat ironically, considering its God-centric subject matter, is as unforgiving as it is gripping.