Lingua Ignota’s Caligula is the liturgy of the isolated individual. It potentially represents one of the most honest theological works that a human could express through music, an undulation through the perverse and the beautiful, an examination and conversation with the Self that is constantly changing, flowing, breathing, screaming into a void, knowing that something rests in bliss and terror beyond the veil.
It does not matter what here is sampled and what here is original music. The primary mode of communication with the listener is through the voice, as most liturgies tend to be. Caligula engages, through identification and reflection, with our own voice in comparison to Hayter’s: listen to how this beautiful, projected sound contorts and bends and hides away. It builds upon itself, polyphonic moments coalescing and fragmenting: the eternal choir of one individual. The use of self-polyphony results in the establishment of a variety of voices singing the same lyrics, enabling many different ways to interpret said lines. Who is the “fucking deathdealer” or the “cuntkiller”? Is it the Self? The violent and abusive Other? The lyrics are constantly in a state of becoming in relationship to the music and voice that contextualizes them. Hayter’s voice has the ethereal beauty of (yet perhaps containing even more power than) Lisa Gerrard’s vocal work, insistently motioning towards the transcendent. And yet despite its beauty there is so much pain contained within it. Hayter also uses at her disposal genuine, horrifying, ugly screaming that conveys exactly the kind of dread that so many metal acts attempt (and oftentimes fail) at trying to achieve. This is no gross romanticizing of suffering. There is no glorification of sadness or depression here. There is only mournful reverence.
Hayter’s view of divinity similarly is constantly in flux in this way: it is always reacting and dancing around the metaphysical, fully aware of its interior presence but dreading its lack of influence (or perhaps over-influence) on the physical. How else does one engage with their personal experience with others? In what context does our suffering count for something beyond the fact that it is our own, and that no one else could ever truly grasp the fullness of that experience? God then becomes a sort of strange figure throughout Caligula and in reality too. God represents the place where we go to tell the secrets that the world will not listen to, that interior space in our minds where everything is and isn’t. God is an incessant stream of paradoxes and doubts and hopes that flows eternally outside of time, always surrounding and engaging with the individual, waiting for that individual to explore and reflect upon those waters of information. Everything reflected there is a lie, and yet everything is a truth too.
There is a quote attributed to Origen: “He makes Himself known to those who, after doing all that their powers will allow, confess that they need help from Him.” Is there not a sort of anger in this motion? It is a sort of punishment, involving shame on behalf of the one who confesses. There is both shame and also a sort of perverse humbleness that occurs when we encounter the non-human divine through confession, especially on the individual and internal level. We know who we truly are, regardless of how we might try to hide it. We are disgusting, strange creatures that roam this Earth, always inflicting violence upon ourselves and on each other. But this does not negate the sincerity of our own experience. Reader, please do not deny yourself of the legitimacy of your own experience.
Hayter sings repeatedly throughout the album (as is this case with many of her lyrics) that “God alone knows my sorrow.” Yet how does this knowledge help? Does God’s omniscience translate to an active source of support? Perhaps in some ways, but in other ways it resoundingly results in almost nothing, especially regarding the kind of suffering that Hayter is describing here. I leave this intentionally vague for the listener. While this album is rooted from Hayter’s intense and horrific personal experience, it is obviously composed and written from the stance that this is an album about the act of suffering, the translation of one’s personal experience and turning it into some sort of communion for all who are willing to listen and participate in. What do we as the listener project onto the distorted sounds, the ringing piano, the droning and repeating lyrics? This is how Caligula becomes a liturgy. It is universal music that speaks to the individual on a transcendent level. Sometimes the registered response is one of hatred and disgust. Hear the cries of “non-music” that ring from people that would rather listen to pleasant sounding music that refuses to challenge the listener in the ways that Hayter does here. It should be noted that there is nothing wrong with people who refuse to listen to ugly things. It makes sense and is completely irrational. But this music should not be ignored simply because it contains sounds, ideas, and lyrics that are jarring, violent, cringe-inducing, etc. It is simply honest.
Perhaps more importantly, a registered response could also be self-identification. Caligula then becomes an Other who is wholly concerned with the damaged and isolated Self, the God Who Knows Their Sorrow. It becomes that which is willing to forgo its own narrative in order to validate and converse with the experience of a Self. For that alone, Caligula is not only one of the most beautiful albums of 2019, it is one of the most beautiful albums period. It represents a place, a state, a human being, an idea, a vision. It contains within it heaven and hell, identification and othering. It is a paradox. It seeks to welcome and to cast out. It is a liturgy for the non-religious believers of something, even if that something has only presented itself on violent and horrific terms. Hayter has truly created something magnificent and transcendent here.
nu-age 