Of the artists who have emerged in rock and metal over the last year, Lingua Ignota has been an especially fascinating one. With last year’s CALIGULA, the solo artist (real name Kristin Hayter) took the world of extreme music by storm with her jarring, nuanced, dreamy brand of noise-rock. Now, Lingua Ignota has released a haunting cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” featuring guest vocals by Daughters frontman Alexis Marshall, that’ll raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
The track is an interesting reinterpretation of Isaak’s atmosphere on the original “Wicked Game.” It’s certainly not an ultra-chill rockabilly jam, but it definitely gets across the landscape of the desert as much as the original. However, this is a bit more of the watching-your-childhood-home-burn kind of desert, the wasteland that develops inside of a shattered human being. Adding to this are the samples from “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” by late Polish composer and Jimmy Page favorite Krzysztof Penderecki. It’s an appropriate take on the song at a time when it feels like the world IS on fire.
Check out Lingua Ignota’s “Wicked Game” below, before you hear it in a commercial for an ultra-bleak video game:
Lignua Ignota’s “Wicked Game” can be purchased at her Bandcamp. It’s also Bandcamp Friday, so 100% of the profits from the track go directly to Hayter.
Lingua Ignota is not the first heavy artist to cover “Wicked Game.” Notable among them are Finnish goth metallers HIM, whose version of the song is considerably less devastating than Hayter’s.
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Words by Chris Krovatin
