Lingua Ignota – "Caligula" – [Profound Lore Records]

Thurston Hunger   6/8/2021   12-inch, A Library

For a while, this album felt thematically like a love song between God and Satan, the world’s oldest co-dependent lovers. But then I read an interview song-by-song breakdown at
https://www.loudersound.com/features/lingua-ignotas-track-by-track-guide-to-new-album-caligula
which shot that theory down in flames. But what pretty flames, whether they burn in hell or just the throat/heart/soul of Kristin Hayter. Hayter’s
voice often multitracked, can assume the shape of some Sardinian shepherds or a choir of Huun-Hurt-Too monks. She invokes the divine torment of Diamanda or Jarboe, and her musical accompaniment is often just as harrowing. Slow and heavy, like the steps of an executioneer plodding across the gallows. Other sounds add to the theatrics of Hayter’s featured voice like forlorn horns (synth’d?), percussion rattles (chained prisoners?), timpani storms and who knew Satan had a piano bar down on the 9th ring. Plus he trimmed his fingernails for this recording. Sonic disintegration is well used here (see “May Your Failure”) which invokes our greatest fallen Pope – Distortus Maximus II. The recording is a study in dynamics, the mix of voices, chorale and tortured to scream – the thickening and thinning of sound, the repetition and prayer/poem cataloging. A very captivating release. And it seems Aileen Wuonos is still her co-pilot (#6) for me a strange patron/matron saint, but viva equal rights in wrongs I guess. Will she paint herself into a pentagram corner, I don’t think so, I expect this Hayter to proper, and continue to bloom like an asphodel.
-Thurston Hunger
I flinch every damn time on the broken glass on “Sorrow!” and then
laugh later on the Lars Ulrich sample sandwiched in