Saved! (album)

Saved! (stylized in all caps) is the fifth studio album by American avant-garde musician Kristin Hayter and the first under the alias Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter. It was released on October 20, 2023, through her own label, Perpetual Flame Ministries. It documents her attempt at salvation through religion, a topic featured heavily under her previous alias, Lingua Ignota. Hayter produced the album with Seth Manchester, and it received acclaim from critics.

Background
On November 2, 2022, Hayter revealed that she would retire the persona Lingua Ignota and the accompanying catalog. In a statement, she explained that it is "not healthy for me to relive my worst experiences over and over" through the music of her former alias. The musician announced the debut album under the name Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, an allusion to her real name Kristin Hayter, on August 22, 2023. A first single titled "All of My Friends Are Going to Hell" with a video directed by herself was shared the same day. The project is set to include a mix of "gospel" classics and "new original music". Hayter created Saved! alongside her long-time collaborator Seth Manchester. The album marks the first release under her new label Perpetual Flame Ministries, which she launched in December 2022.

Hayter herself declared the album to be the "Book of Revelations within", in which she reaches "new levels of unhinged, spiritually and sonically". After leaving "Lingy" behind, she is now seeking herself, explaining, "evangelical conversion becomes an allegory for undoing and rebuilding". In order to achieve that, she quotes: "To live ye must be born again". It signifies an "earnest attempt to achieve salvation" and comes across as an "apocalyptic revelation on the complex, sometimes ugly, always nonlinear process of healing". After hearing the album, Nat Lacuna of New Noise Magazine found Saved! to be "quite a departure" from Hayter's previous work, as the musical arrangements consist "mostly of piano and vocals". Hayter and Manchester started out recording on a 4-track which then "degraded in a series of small half-broken cassette players".

Critical reception
Saved! received a score of 84 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on five critics' reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Nick Ruskell of Kerrang! wrote that "Kristin is in a different place", calling it "an album built on twisted folk-horror Americana that still features so much darkness and painful emotion, but also has a desperate hope to it that there is better to be found". Reviewing the album for Exclaim!, Kyle Kohner wrote that Hayter "toes the line between the horrifying hell still burning within and a hope-feigning religious euphoria" and while she "doesn't quite have the answers, [...] the quest is what drives the reverend to take up her cross with such fiery passion".

John Amen of The Line of Best Fit found Hayter's "delivery is as anguished as ever, even if her perspective reflects a religious or teleological clarity. All things considered, Hayter demonstrates that she's as compelling when testifying from an evangelical perch as when navigating an existential crisis". Annie Parnell of Paste summarized that "the result is an unspooled revelation, a supplicant's distorted glee—a celebration which Hayter leaves pointedly open-ended". Parnell concluded that the Saved! "professes a simple, guaranteed salvation — but only if you insist, through blood and iron, on taking it".

Personnel

 * Kristin Hayter – vocals, prepared piano
 * Seth Manchester – recording