Kristin Hayter

Hayter was born in Del Mar, California, in 1986.[2][3] She felt like she didn't fit in in Southern California and was often bullied.[3] About her hometown, she said: "I think of [Del Mar] as a sort of hell in the way that I was so different than everyone else when I was growing up and couldn't situate myself, couldn't find myself there at all."[2] Hayter was raised Catholic and studied in parochial school until the sixth grade, when she entered public school.[2] A teacher noticed her voice's natural vibrato when she was eight years old, which led to her becoming a church cantor, singing every week at her local church and beginning classical voice-training lessons.[3] Despite a religious upbringing, she considered herself to be an atheist for several years starting as a teenager.[4] However, in 2019, Hayter claimed she had "renounced her teenage atheism" and had become particularly interested in Roman Catholic iconography and concepts of divine retribution.[1]

Hayter studied interdisciplinary creative arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Literary Art from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2016.[1][2][3] She is also classically trained in piano and voice.[1] Her undergraduate thesis, titled Architect and Vapor, deconstructed Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, and centered its poetry component on anorexia, a disorder Hayter had for over a decade.[2] For her MFA thesis, titled Burn Everything Trust No One Kill Yourself, she created a 10,000-page manuscript (a page count selected because it was approximately Hayter's weight in paper[3]) linking real-world examples of misogyny in music with her own personal life using a Markov chain. In her own words, it was composed of "lyrics, message board posts, and liner notes from subgenres of extreme music that mythologize misogyny, […] [and] court papers, audio recordings, and police filings from my own experiences of violence."[2] In addition to the manuscript, her interdisciplinary performance included music and a black-and-white video projection with footage of serial killer Aileen Wuornos and burning buildings.[3]

Lingua Ignota performing live at Roadburn Festival 2019

Lingua Ignota's two 2017 releases, Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him and All Bitches Die, have been described using a wide range of musical genres, including baroque,[7][25] black metal,[5][25] classical,[4][6][7] death industrial,[2][25] doom metal,[4] electronic,[4] extreme metal,[1][2] experimental,[4] folk,[1][25] harsh noise wall,[6] metal,[1] industrial,[1][4][7] neoclassical,[2] noise,[5][6][7] opera,[5] power electronics[6][25] and spiritual.[1] Her third studio album, Caligula, features fewer industrial and electronic influences.[5][26] Hayter herself admits she has difficulty describing her musical genre.[2]

Generally, Hayter draws inspiration from people "who've been through hard shit and keep going. The people who are still strong even if they're struggling to have their voices heard."[4] She first became interested in rock music when she found a cassette tape copy of Nirvana's 1991 album Nevermind left behind by her cousin, and became "obsessed" with Kurt Cobain. She said, "I became enamored of [Cobain] and wanted to be him, wanted to make music like him, wanted to have a voice like him."[2] The interest in Cobain inspired her to take singing lessons in grade school.[3] By high school, her music tastes evolved into underground, extreme and complex artists including grindcore band the Locust, extreme metal band Cattle Decapitation, free jazz founder Ornette Coleman, experimental noise musician Aaron Dilloway, and avant-garde musician John Zorn.[3] Both Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails had an early influence, and she estimates that she likely saw the music video for "Closer" when she was about 12 years old. She said of Nine Inch Nails' seminal 1994 second album: "The Downward Spiral was a gateway into industrial music and then noise and experimental. It's not too difficult to get from Nine Inch Nails to [Einstürzende] Neubauten to Merzbow."[27] She is particularly influenced by vocalists, including German musician Blixa Bargeld (Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), German new wave vocalist Klaus Nomi, American composer Cathy Berberian, Hungarian extreme metal vocalist Attila Csihar and Greek-American avant-garde musician Diamanda Galás.[4] Hayter has also studied traditional Bulgarian polyphony.[28]

Hayter is a survivor of domestic violence and draws from her experiences to write what she describes as "survivor anthems".[1] After reading several books about surviving abuse, she noticed common themes and advice around gentleness, self-love and adopting new hobbies as coping mechanisms, but she felt this "enforced patriarchal models of civilized femininity".[2] Instead, her music seeks to explore other avenues of survivorhood, such as rage and despair, and her lyrical approach to topics of violence are emotionally raw (from "All Bitches Die": "he beat me till my teeth were scattered / like pearls across the red, red ground").[1] Hayter's interest in performing extreme music, in part, stems from her multiple abusive relationships. One of her relationships was with a prominent figure in the Providence noise music scene, and his abusive behavior changed how she relates to the genre.[1][2] In a separate interview, Hayter mentioned a relationship with someone who would not allow her to perform music, so as soon as the relationship was over, Hayter used Lingua Ignota to process what she went through.[1][4] Though her music is empowering for women, Hayter has said her work intentionally has nothing in common with feminism or feminist theory.[4] Instead, she's reclaiming what she describes as a "phallocentric"[1] genre for the benefit of other survivors of abuse. She said:

"I don't find most of the graphic depictions of (forgive my language here) 'sending this dumb slut back to hell hearing her final screams as my throbbing erection pounds her maggot-filled cunt' upsetting to my feminine sensibilities, most of it isn't even well-executed enough to be taken seriously, I just find that it occupies this weird space of being simultaneously very loaded and totally obsolete, especially when we consider that none of these guys are actually sodomizing female corpses in their free time. So my thoughts were to flip this whole paradigm and to try to make it meaningful, to reframe extreme imagery for survivors of violence, upon whom very dark shit has actually been visited, and who may have been confronted with the possibility of committing homicide in self-defense to survive an attack."[4]

Lingua Ignota is known for its energetic and expressionistic live performances. A typical stage setup includes a keyboard with a "believe survivors" sticker and a video projection of violent, beautiful and biblical imagery.[2] Hayter delivers vocals "that oscillate between the venomous and aggressive and the heartbreakingly mournful"[3] and loses control of her body on stage, often hitting herself with objects and leaving bruises.[4] Hayter describes her live performance as an "exorcism"[2][4] in that, similar to her interest in Hildegard of Bingen's "Lingua Ignota" language given to her by God, she feels like a "conduit"[1] with her performance flowing through her.[2] She says, "I very much try to get to a place where [the performance] no longer feels like me, and where something else is moving through me, whether that's my abuser, or god, or something that can create a voice I wouldn't have myself."[2] Repeatedly performing music about violence and surviving abusers can be emotionally taxing, but Hayter says she is motivated when other survivors tell her how much her music deeply resonates with them.[1]

Kristin Hayter is a survivor of domestic violence and has been in several relationships that were "physically, emotionally, sexually, or psychologically" abusive.[2] One abusive relationship lasted five years[2] and in a separate interview she detailed an abusive relationship with "a very powerful noise musician in the Providence community".[1] While the events of her abuse were traumatizing, she says what came after was worse, elaborating: "He was arrested for assaulting me and some of my most traumatic memories are from being re-victimized by police, by my school, and by the court. The system is so fucking broken for victims of sexual and domestic violence."[2]

In December 2021, she released a statement accusing her ex-boyfriend Alexis Marshall, the frontman of Daughters, of sexual assault, rape, and "psychologically, emotionally, and sexually" abusing her throughout their relationship. She alleged that, during "one incident of objectifying, violent sex", Marshall had injured her spine and caused a spinal disc herniation, which led to her developing cauda equina syndrome that required surgery. Marshall denied the allegations and is "investigating legal options".[29][30]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lingua Ignota.

• Official website
• Lingua Ignota on Bandcamp
• Lingua Ignota on Sargent House