Religion sounds like a hoot, doesn’t it? Like, imagine if you were into Live Action Roleplaying/LARP or civil war re-enactments, you loved all the play pretend that you had to work within (“Put your phone away, Stuart!”), loved these artificial rules that you’re being asked to work under. And then some weirdo, probably wearing a cloak and maybe a golden hat, comes up to you and says “A’ight, that’s cool and all, but I’ve got a game that you have to play you’re whole life, and if you break any of our artificial rules, you’ll burn in hell for eternity!!” That’d be pretty dope, no?
Mate, religion is some next level LARPing. You’re always in the game because this God, or these Gods, they’re everywhere, all the time, and they can see everything you do. And the punishment for breaking the rules isn’t just some sinbin, or a disapproving look from Janet because they don’t believe you should be wearing New Balance sneakers if you’re supposed to be an Elemental Elf. If you get the rules wrong, this God character – or these God characters – will burn your soul for eternity!! And you thought Rio getting eight months for missing that drug test was excessive! And yes, that is the most recent cultural reference I can think of! Oh, and some of these Gods have, like, lions for heads and shit, you do not want to fuck with them. Seriously, they’re metal as fuck.
Once the universe is set up – and, trust me, some religions have a lot of lore to get your head around – you can basically get people to do all sorts of stupid shit. You can literally get them to just start hitting themselves. Tell the players that they can transfer their sins to a chicken and watch them actually try to do it! Tell them that they’re not allowed to wear clothes, you big perv, say that they’re ‘wearing the environment’ or some shit. Hey, everyone, hang yourself from metal hooks! Scar your skin to look like a crocodile! Oh my Me, they’re actually doing it! OK, OK, OK, how about… how about… How about taking the dead bodies of your dead relatives out of their tombs and… and… and dancing with them! Alright! Looks like all bets are off! Can we talk about cutting up genitals now? Yeah?
Pentecostalism is a good one. Not a great one – there are no crocodile scars or genital mutilation – but a good, midlevel set of loopy beliefs. Obviously, it’s always a good idea to distance yourself from Christianity. Christianity is like the most boring religion, most people only call themselves Christian so they can have a few days off in December. The only time it’s ever properly used it’s by American presidents justifying cluster bombing poorer, browner countries. Not fun. And anyway, in the West its like the big one. How are you differentiating yourself if you call yourself ‘Christian’? It’s like saying that your favourite film is ‘Marvel movies’. Like, duh! That’s everything! Put some fucking effort into your personality, I beg of you. Oh, but Pentecostalism? OK, I’m listening. From the Protestant branch, you say? That’s the most boring part of Christianity, the most boring religion, but go on. What’s that? It’s a – and I quote – ‘Charismatic Christianity‘ movement?? Charismatic Christianity?? Well shit, I might have given this whole ‘religion’ thing more of a shot if I knew that I could be a charismatic Christian! What sort of beliefs do you have (charismatically)? Yeah, very literal reading of the bible, you crazy bastards, but that’s becoming a bit of a base level of nuttiness, I’m pretty sure the Overton window of Christian politicians has shifted so much that it’s almost expected. Oh shit! You’re one of the speaking in tongues lot! That is so awesome! We’re gonna have a good time here.
Another central tenet of Pentecostalism is divine healing. Pentecostalism is an holistic faith. It believes sin leads to human suffering and so it stands to reason that the power of the church and the power of the gospel will restore someone’s relationship with God, restore their spiritual suffering and – you’d imagine, no? – also heal them physically. Also, Jesus did it in the bible, didn’t he? And those Pentecostals are pretty big on what’s in the bible. Like, they follow that shit religiously, they almost treat it as gospel. They believe faith and prayer are essential to healing, and look to James 5:13-16 as proof:
13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.
14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.
15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
James
It sounds crazy at first… But that does seem like a coherent plan… What if you really need healing? Can you think of any other ideas?
Kristin Hayter has suffered for a long time. Over four albums as Lingua Ignota, they transformed pure trauma into audio experience through music and words quite unlike any other artist. Their music attacked the listener, it struck them across the face, audially abused them. This is what the world has done to me, it seemed to scream (or occasionally just whisper), Now you know how it feels. In December 2021, they released a brutally honest and extremely graphic statement outlining the horrific and continuous abuse they had suffered at the hands of their partner over the course of the two years they had been together. It’s grim reading, but it’s almost like we already knew. We could hear all that abuse, all that rape, all that sexual assault, all those physical and mental injuries already in the music that they made. It’s been tough going for us, the listeners, as we greedily munch on the bloody strips of their body that Hayter is tearing off and throwing out to us circling vultures. It was tough for us. Imagine how tough it’s been for them.
It was too much. Hayter retired the Lingua Ignota ‘persona’ in early 2023:
Every day I do conscious, active work to stay present — where I am safe, rather than mired in my past — where I was not. I will not allow my wounds to destroy me. I want to live a healthy, happy life and have changed much in myself and my surroundings to bring light in. As such the art has to change too. It is not healthy for me to relive my worst experiences over and over through LI, and my healing has finally allowed me to *feel* how painful that is.
Hayter 22.11.02
Like, duh. Fucking hell, get out of their, Hayter! “Not healthy for me to relive my worst experiences over and over”?? Yeah, probably not. She said that “out of desperation, I gave myself permission to heal for the first time”.
And how did that healing start? Why, by ordaining online as an actual Minister, of course! And Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter‘s ‘debut’ album is, to put it mildly, quite a fucking trip. Hayter has gone balls deep into the conceit, so that these eleven incredibly powerful but often bewildering tracks could have been found in the attic of some dusty old decrepit farmhouse, in the middle of a field miles away from nowhere and nobody’s lived there for years. Not since… the incident. Hayter and producer Seth Manchester (we’ll get back to Mr Manchester) recorded onto four track, played the cassettes back through broken players in order to damage them, then just mangled them the fuck up with their hands to further impair the sound. To corrupt it. To abuse it. Listen to the warped, near indecipherable I’M GETTING OUT WHILE I CAN and try and tell me that Kristin Hayter isn’t at least committed to the bit.
It’s an astonishing piece of work. Few individual songs leap out at you, but the atmosphere of anxiety and the unshakeable lack of safety makes for an experience like not other album released this year. No other album ever. Superficially though, this is by far Hayter’s most positive and even happy album. The songs are praises to the everloving spirit! What could be bad about that?? It’s a record that works in how the art is presented. It also includes a lot of speaking in tongues. But again, that’s a good thing, yeah?? Hayter’s just exhibiting her closeness to the gospel! Not disturbing at all! Praise Jesus! Is this her divine healing? Is ‘SAVED!’ the soundtrack to the closest a human can get to be fully healed? You can say all the words, read from the gospel and speak in tongues, but that tape will always be hissing in the background.
This will be the only Seth Manchester album on the list, unfortunately. I know, I know, I’ve tried to include every album he’s produced since ‘Goodness’, but I had to be honest with myself this year and the rest of them didn’t make the cut (though a couple were close)! I’m going to countdown the Seth Manchester albums in their own dedicated list before we hit #1, I promise.
2021 #13 (as Lingua Ignota)
Ah, shit, didn’t manage to work in one ‘Hayters gonna hate’ pun 😞
Necessary Evil 
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