Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: “SAVED!” Review
Snap, crackle, pop, my headphones are broken. At least, that’s what I thought when I started “SAVED!” the new album by Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, formerly known as Lingua Ignota. Blowing harrowing vocals across the casket-slamming sounds of piano and harpsichord, this project begins as any Hayter project would be expected to start, that is, until the pitch distorts and the sound quality dips in and out, leading me to wiggle the bent and pleated aux cord plugged into my phone.
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter album artwork for “SAVED!”
After a frustrating few minutes and restarting the track, it quickly becomes clear this effect is on purpose, revealing the frame that this album, a concept album, is situated in. Now performing under this fictional guise of Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, Hayter is taking her listeners in a new direction, drifting away from the cacophonous, dark, gregorian sound of her previous records.
Instead of unobtrusively listening to the sounds of Catholic trauma and American evangelism embedded into her previous records, Hayter has reached out through her listener’s speakers, taken them by the hand, and dragged them down into a much more visceral, intimate experience. When I’m listening to “SAVED!” I’m not just listening to a record, I’m listening to someone listening to a record.
I can hear someone fumbling with the sound controls, correcting the rotation speed, and fidgeting with the cable connections. This twice-departed listening experience evokes a voyeuristic sensation as if I hit my head and woke up in 1950s Tennessee to observe Southern Revivalism first-hand. Like being in a flashback, I can see the roof of the white canvas tent lit by oil lamps and a mass of blue-collar folk crowded around the soapbox of a traveling minister, sweat dripping down his face as he shouts across the tent about the end of days.
By the end of the track, the haunting vocals, fighting for space with the mess the “listener” is making with the settings, erupt into distorted screaming, as if the most devout of this blue-collar crowd has devolved into speaking in tongues and when the song ends, I am fully immersed within the illusion.
Unlike the noise-rock and avant-garde, neoclassical influences of Hayter’s previous albums, this one’s sound palette is rooted in folk hymnals, bluegrass, and southern gospel. Most of the songs are lightly instrumented, featuring only the piano, what sounds like a harpsichord, minimal percussion, guitar, and choir-like vocal layering. Regardless, Hayter’s classical music education shines throughout, as she utilizes the instruments at maximum efficiency without overdoing the melodic complexities or flashing unnecessarily convoluted musicianship. The chords are layered and potent, but primarily cradling Hayter’s magnificent voice, whose lyrics about “all my friends going to hell” and the eventual damnation of all sinners, sends chills down the bones of any listener who’s even slightly spiritual.
Photo taken by Unknown
Combining the musical atmosphere and the lyricism, you come up with a project that sounds as if it was a collaboration between Flannery O’Connor and the Louvin Brothers, except O’Connor didn’t let any of the Louvin Brothers' lyrical charisma squeeze through. Combining traditional hymns and original songs, Hayter paints a horrifying portrait of fear-driven salvation.
With the exception of questionably optimistic lyrics in “THERE IS POWER IN THE BLOOD,” a hymn originally written by Lewis Edgar Jones, the rest of the tracks center primarily on images of sin and paranoia. This song, as well as a few others like “PRECIOUS LORD, TAKE MY HAND” reminds fundamentalist listeners (if there are any) that the power of blood can save them from the wrath of Christ, but as the album continues it becomes clear that the rest of us degenerates are probably in trouble.
Embodying the fear-mongering rhetoric employed by Southern Revivalists, the lyrical themes of “SAVED!” focus heavily on the terror of life after death, especially hell. For example, in the song “IDUMEA,” originally written by Ananias Davisson, Hayter sings, “Soon as from Earth I go/What will become of me?/Eternal happiness or woe/Must then my portion be/…/Waked by the trumpet sound/I from my grave shall rise;/To meet the judge with glory crowned/And see the flaming skies!” Hayter laments about what awaits her after death and if, whether she has been pious or not, she will see the flaming skies of heaven or of hell. We don’t really know what the resolution will be, but it certainly adds considerable weight to the heavy-handed notion of “fearing God.”
Photo taken by Unknown
Through the manipulative use of hymns and original songs, Hayter takes up the mantle of an evangelist Reverend, stoking our fears and offering us a chance at deliverance. It’s manipulative and efficacious at creating this oppressive atmosphere, but the distorted production and retro-fitted instrumentation always remind me that it’s an illusion. I don’t need to experience first-hand the chilling effect of doomsday hawking and pamphlet wavering ministers decrying the rapture, because Hayter keeps me at a safe, but still sweat-inducing distance. Hayter doesn’t submit me directly to the grip of God’s wrath wrapped around my throat, but just close enough to feel Him breathing down my neck.
