Lingua Ignota (“Unknown language” in Latin) is a project from Rhode Island by Kristin Hayter. As her website says, Kristin is an interdisciplinary artist. In other words, we should expect her music to be inextricably connected with her (visual) arts. I’m no expert of visual arts, so I’ll only judge her music.
“All Bitches Die” is a very ambitious album combining neoclassical music, power electronics and death industrial. To give you an idea of how ambitious this is, I think that the project may be conceived as Roger Karmanik that meets Diamond Galas. And yes, it is amazing as it sounds. However, there are few things that can be improved. Let me explain a little bit.
The four songs included in this album try to merge noise walls and disturbing creaking with elegant neoclassical melodies performed with piano and organ. Kristin’s vocals shift from sacred and liturgical melodies to furious and desperate screams. I hasten to add that Kristin is a classically trained performer, so when I say that there are neoclassical melodies I mean that there is professionalism here, and not just the use of vocal samples or very basic melodies. The result is impressive. Especially “Woe to all” and “All bitches die” are desperately passionate, Kristin’s voice drags the listener into an ocean of despair, but at the same time the neoclassical background makes such desperation something magnificent. Her music is literally apocalyptic, because when I listen to her music I can only think about apocalypse. In other words, the neoclassical part of this album is absolutely amazing, and just for this, one should buy the album via bandcamp.
If the album is so amazing, why only 4 stars rather than 5? Because there are things that can be improved. It’s no big deal at this early stage of Lingua Ignota’s career, but still I should mention some things that other reviews tend to ignore. Something more should be done when it comes to the power electronics part. One may think that power electronics or (since I mentioned Brighter Death Now) death industrial is something easy to do: you just need to make as much noise as you can. This is clearly false. Kristin creates very basic noise walls sometimes enriched with creaks of different sort. However, there is no control ("For I am the light" is a example). Transitions (with the exception of the ones in the song “All bitches die”) may be improved. Creaks seem to be very basic samples (but I might be wrong) and my impression is that they are not processed in the way a noise artist would do. Processing, connecting, uniting and other dozens of things that you can do with samples are, in my opinion, essential in extreme industrial music. Lingua Ignota makes use of power electronics and death industrial resources, but without developing them in a personal way. I notice this especially because in these very days I’m listening to a recent album of a very famous power electronics act (Institution D.O.L.), which is very sophisticated from this point of view. I want to stress that THIS IS NOT a rejection, but a plea for working more on the integration of the two styles, because Lingua Ignota is a project that can become potentially one of the most important act of the scene (whatever the ‘scene’ is).