I have never been to Appalachia or rural Pennsylvania, but as of lately there has been no shortage of movies and documentaries informing the public about the region’s shocking poverty, its decaying towns, its peculiar variant of Christian belief, and last but not least about the world view of its residents. Rural Pennsylvania, namely, is the region where Kristin Hayter, better known as Lingua Ignota, found herself at the beginning of the pandemic, having moved there to be closer to her partner. Isolated in an isolated region, over 100 miles away from the nearest major city, she put her impressions to music. The result is Lingua Ignota’s new album Sinner Get Ready.
Lingua Ignota’s first two albums All Bitches Die and Caligula were written out of the perspective of abuse victims determined to murder their abusers. Employing shock-inducing, chilling music created out of different elements such as opera, black metal, electronica and noise, they gave insight into the devastating emotional and mental consequences of abuse through innovative compositions and blood-thirsty lyrics. Sinner Get Ready is broader in scope than its predecessors and aims to portray a whole region with its defining characteristics like landscape, living conditions, major personae, ruling sentiment and mindset. In addition, the album also tries to give an explanation for why things are the way they are.
The change of theme logically resulted in a change of soundscapes. However, the change is not that great that it will alienate fans. Sinner Get Ready is recognizably and undoubtedly a Lingua Ignota album. Kristin Hayter still uses her professionally trained voice in impressive ways; she plays organ and the piano as on previous albums, and there is still the cling-clang of bells and other objects to be heard, as well as buzzing and distortion sounds. Yet, all in all, the music is less extreme and more avantgarde. The absence of blood-freezing screeching and rasping prompted reviewers to say that Hayter had left all black metal influences behind, but I don’t think that that’s accurate. The newly included folk elements, stemming mainly from local stringed instruments, like banjo and mountain dulcimer, are very black metal. Moreover, the atypical, rudimentary, raw, broken sounds produced on these instruments are one example of how the region’s vibe, has been put to music.
Christian belief, a sub topic in all of Lingua Ignota’s work so far, plays a major role on Sinner Get Ready. Pennsylvania is home to the Pennsylvania Dutch (actually the Pennsylvania Germans; “Deutsch” has been corrupted to “Dutch”), the Mennonites and the Amish among them, and with them to a strict, punishing, frightful God. The album title “Sinner Get Ready”, as well as the song title “Repent now, confess now”, are examples of slogans that one can encounter in the region – on signs beside roads, painted on barns, or as a demand put to you by your preacher. The album’s closing track The Solitary Brethren of Ephrata is named after the Ephrata Cloister, a historical religious institution in the region, founded by a German.
But the album does more than reference the origins of Christianity in the region. It also points out to what it has degenerated to in modern times and what effects it has on current problems. A section of an interview with a sex worker that televangelist Jimmy Swaggart visited multiple times is to be found on track number eight, Man is like a spring flower, and on the closing track, in a passage from another interview, a woman gives “being covered in Jesus’ blood” as the reason for why she’s protected from anything and doesn’t need to wear a mask or get vaccinated.
One of the songs where all aspects mentioned above come together most effectively is Perpetual Flame of Centralia, named after a well-known Pennsylvanian ghost town under which a coal mine fire has been burning since the 1960s. The devastating picture of the town, brought to mind by the track title, is well represented in the music which is mostly vocals and piano. You can hear the quiet, the sadness, the emptiness and the melancholia of abandoned houses, businesses and streets. Repetitive, prayerlike lyrics, containing familiar church vocabulary like “blood of Jesus” and “snake of Eden”, add an eerie element and a pinch of lunacy.
Sinner Get Ready, the new full-length by Lingua Ignota, is a concept album displaying a research-based, academic approach to music that does not forsake artistic aspects. Though different in sound and less extreme than its colossal predecessors, the album is frightfully accurate, impressive and efficient in achieving what it set out to do. At the moment, Lingua Ignota is a singular phenomenon on the music scene and her albums a must listen for any music aficionado.
(9/10 Slavica)
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