Lingua Ignota – “O Ruthless Great Divine Director”
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In the past three years, the Rhode Island-born musician Kristin Hayter has made three albums of grand, operatic, unbelievably heavy music under the name Lingua Ignota. Hayter’s music draws on things like goth, metal, classical, and experimental, and it explores sex and violence in stark, confrontational ways. Her music doesn’t fit readily into any categories. Caligula, the album that she released last year, is a real oh, fuck piece of work. If you haven’t already, you would be well-advised to investigate further. (We at Stereogum slept on it. We fucked up.)
Hayter has been putting in serious work lately. Along with the Body’s Lee Buford and Full Of Hell’s Dylan Walker, is a member of the band Sightless Pit, and they released the album Grave Of A Dog last month. Last week, Hayter also put together a harsh noise remix of Gal Gadot’s terrible celebrities-singing-“Imagine” video, and she posted it online within a few hours of the video infecting everyone’s consciousness. Today, Hayter has a new Lingua Ignota song called “O Ruthless Great Divine Director,” released as a part of Adult Swim’s Singles series.
“O Ruthless Great Divine Director” opens with Hayter belting out the line “everyone I know’s a fucking cop.” The song builds and builds from there, layering on multi-tracked voices and florid pianos and metal thunder. In a press release, Hayter says, “O Ruthless Great Divine Director’ both addresses and embodies the hypocrite and the false prophet. The sanctimonious scene police, the friend or community who will turn away or against when things get hard, fear mongering and pervasive misinformation. It was a great pleasure to have Greg Fox’s incredible talent on this song, and to work with Seth Manchester again at the console.” Listen below.
You can (and should) check out Caligula here.