Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: SAVED!

On HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING, the finale to the Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter’s SAVED!, the avant-garde force of nature pits beautiful hushed vocals and a gentle piano-led paean against unhinged chaos; her violent coughs and weeps raging underneath the mix, forming the kind of maelstrom that bids to expel tainted spirits of the past.

Under her new creative vessel as Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, SAVED! is emphatically an album of healing. Still riding along the darkest frontiers, despite the torn, frayed and soul crushing performance on HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING, by and large Hayter delivers something a little easier to digest in comparison with the Lingua Ignota experience.

Whilst the bravely original Lingua Ignota story was equal parts visceral and harrowing, within a furnace so fierce, it was always difficult to see how Hayter could maintain such a ferocity without enduring prolonged mental suffering. In true punk ethos, the Lingua Ignota story (perhaps the most unique of the past decade) came to its conclusion last week after two stirring performances at London’s Assembly Hall.

Marthe: Further In Evil

The fact Hayter continues to make music is in itself a celebration. Both thematically and sonically, the Lingua Ignota experience was like negotiating through the epicentre of an earthquake. And that was just from a listener’s perspective…

On Saved! The New England-based artist navigates through the paths to divinity and along the way, things feel a little more at ease. Alongside her constant collaborator Seth Manchester, once again the pair explore the darkest corners one could possibly imagine.

Proving his exceptional recording range, Manchester is just as effective within the inner grains of sound as opposed to the chaos he is used to orchestrating from behind the soundboards. His forward-thinking ideas produce another watershed moment, as he and Hayter effectively run sound through the butcher’s mincer; this time taking high-fidelity recordings and running them through a 4-track recorder and later with half-broken cassette players.

It makes for an eroding sound quality that creates its own cinematic drama. Sepia coloured imagery where relics are littered through rugged landscapes in the middle of nowhere. It’s a locality not often envisioned through the esoteric sea of volume that Hayter and Manchester have inhabited for all these years. It’s another wonderful element to this new chapter of the Kristin Hayter story.

Filled with conviction from the off, this is a shedding of skins. A rebirth, not a reboot. To cleanse the soul and move forward, and on I’M GETTING OUT WHILE I CAN the message is clear.(“Get out while you can / On judgement day do you know where you stand.”)

On the tracks ALL OF MY FREIDNS ARE GOING TO HELL and THE POOR WAYFARING STRANGER, Hayter addresses her followers from behind what sounds like a decayed piano. Its keys nicotine-stained, emitting the kind of echoes that escape through the cracked windows of a deserted saloon.

Lingua Ignota: SINNER GET READY – “devastating emotional burden”

Then there is I Will BE WITH YOU ALWAYS. Skeletal and haunting, it’s one of the finest moments Hayter has captured on tape. “Return my body to me / Release me,” she demands in something purely cosmic and cathartic. If ever a song had the power to open up a portal to a new world, then look no further. Arguably it’s as perfect as that single blade of grass Hayter references throughout the song; that same blade recuring later in the album.

Once again, MAY THIS COMFORT AND PROTECT YOU is imbued in religious overtones that are inspired by the Pentecostal-Holiness Movement. A slow burning hymn that is like a blanket of hope in the aftermath of someone’s world falling apart. Trauma arrives in different ways for us all, but the rich emotional intensity through this song makes it feel collective. It’s also the kind of hymnal sonics tailor-made for churches. It continues on I KNOW HIS BLOOD CAN MAKE ME WHOLE. “I was a gambler just like you / I was sick and I couldn’t get well” sings Hayter, as god is used a metaphorical vessel towards a world filled with peace.

While there are many vignettes that one could construe as the defining moment on SAVED! perhaps it comes earlier on during IDUMEA. “Eternal happiness must let my fortune be,” sings Hayter, unravelling the complications this life so often brings. As we get older peace the hardest commodity to find, particularly in a world that thrives in turmoil and moves at lighting speed. And while many may find different meanings through Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter’s SAVED!, one aspect most will agree on is the sheer catharsis of it. An an out-of-body experience, and while Hayter has always produced art of this nature, on SAVED! it feels like she is walking away from the storm’s ire instead of directly into it.

SAVED! is out now via Perpetual Flame Ministries. Purchase from Bandcamp.