Next month, The Flenser label artist Chat Pile will be appearing alongside Krtistin Hayter's Lingua Ignota project at the The Crocodile, for a night stradling diametric extremities of the sounds currently issuing from the mutating offshoots of experimental black metal. The related global scene's ongoing and burgeoning development have encompassed melodicism and atmospheres lifted from shoegaze and spacerock, eruptions of heavy psych rock, industrial drumming, synth exploration, electronic atmospheres, and pure experimental noise. The expansiveness of this sound is further detailed in Brad Sanders' essential overview, "Untrue And International: Living in a Post-Black Metal World". Beyond this primer, deeper reading and curation from this spectrum can be found in the past decade of excellent selections in The Quietus' Columnus Metallicus column, covering releases dominantly sourced from labels like, Hydrahead, Ipecac, Deathwish, 20 Buck Spin, Sargent House, Profound Lore, Season of Mist, Roadburn, The Flenser, Neurot and Relapse. Representing the more avant and industrial-spawned facet of this sound, power electronics composer, pianist, and classically trained singer Kristin Hayter's devotional music inspired Lingua Ignota remains an outlier within this culture. In The Quietus' "Fire, Prayer & Curses: Lingua Ignota Interviewed", she plumbs its 12th Century sources of ecstatic inspiration where they meet in an urgent and ferocious record on the subject of the unsayable, the unspeakable, and the traumatic repression of abuse. Yet more than just a "Extreme Music Reckoning with Misogyny", for her third album "Caligula", Hayter adds that Lingua Ignota is not just about catharsis, but also transformation and retribution. Yet this year, the transformative journey of Lingua Ignota's particular vein of cathartic ritual concludes, as Hayter has announced that her "Lingua Ignota Project is Coming to an End", owing to what the artist describes in her statement to Pitchfork; "I have been making a lot of changes in my life, and my music needs to change in tandem. I will be retiring all music I’ve made up till now after my upcoming tour and a few unannounced special performances in spring of 2023. I am proud of what I have accomplished so far and I look forward to what the future holds, I am in no way leaving music behind and will continue to build this world, but this world will look different." Hayter’s (seemingly final) album as Lingua Ignota, "Sinner Get Ready" for the Sargent House label, featured Appalachian instruments and televangelist sermons, and a shift into more explicit tackling of religious fundamentalism and revelation. All of the above factors detailed in her statement, compounded by the difficulties and delays surrounding the pandemic, will make this tour the singular opportunity for many audiences to witness Hayter's music from the album live.
