Lingua Ignota’s music has always come with a certain duality as her first three albums cycled through the harshest Industrial textures and the most arresting Neoclassical Darkwave. However, that duality has seemingly been phased out with the release of her fourth full-length, Sinner Get Ready (Sargent House). The walls of noise are considerably subdued in comparison to past outings and the vocals are devoid of screams and distortion, leaving the songs to be primarily driven by sparse piano and organs with layers of melismatic cleans.

There’s also been a noticeable change in thematic perspective. As the album’s title suggests, the borderline religious fervor that Lingua Ignota has used to relay her themes of abuse and trauma takes on a very literal connotation this time around. The lyrics are rife with faith-induced personal anguish and condemnations of corrupt officials with several samples popping up throughout depicting believers expressing toxic devotion. The greater incorporation of folk instrumentation also lets her already pastoral brand of song structuring engage with a more rural atmosphere. In short, Sinner Get Ready is a very… Catholic sounding album.

But just because the textures are more melodic doesn’t mean that the delivery still can’t scare the shit out of you. ‘I Who Bend The Tall Grasses’ is the closest we get to the days of 2019’s Caligula as minimal organ layers and dissonant bells set an unnerving foundation for the vocals to cycle through mournful cadences and vengeful snarls that ‘Many Hands’ follows with dulcimer plucked with a frenzy that may just be as demented. Inversely, ‘Pennsylvania Furnace’ and ‘Perpetual Flame of Centralia’ ends up being just as creepy even with their gentler piano and restrained singing.

Overall, Sinner Get Ready is the sort of album that should feel like a drastic departure on paper but ends up being perfectly in character. The overtly personal catharsis of Lingua Ignota’s past releases is arguably more emotionally harrowing, but the religious lens applied here gives her signature tropes an even grander sense of purpose. The absence of harsh-clean contrasts risks interchangeable song structuring but allowing the melodic elements to fully take over allows them to be explored to their fullest extents between the rootsier instruments and operatic delivery. It’s hard to say whether this album is that accessible in the traditional sense, but it may be the easiest to feel out. At the very least, it does an excellent job of achieving a similar power through very different means.

Buy the album here: https://ffm.to/li-sinnergetready

9 / 10

CHRIS LATTA