Present Day, June 9, 2026
Let me be precise about what Sanctified Hunger is and what it is not.
It is not an atheist album. I am not arguing that God does not exist. I have had five hundred and sixty-eight years to gather evidence on that question and it remains genuinely open as far as I can determine.
It is not an argument that faith is harmful. I have known too many genuinely faithful people, in too many traditions, across too many centuries, whose faith produced real goodness in the world. The faith is real. I respect it even when I do not share it.
What I am arguing, and what the album documents, is the distinction between the faith and the institution that claims to be its only necessary vehicle. The institution is not the faith. The institution is an organization with organizational imperatives: survival, growth, the management of the people inside it. These imperatives have historically required things that the faith itself does not require: the silencing of questions, the demonization of outsiders, the accumulation of authority at the expense of the people the authority claims to serve.
Twelve tracks. Five centuries of accumulated testimony. Well Trained. I Was Never Yours. Litany of Dust. The Fate We Let Arise. Their Final Test. I Am He. Observed Devotion. The Damned. You Are. Holy War. I Am Crying. In My Name. Each title is a document. Each song is evidence in a case that has been building since 1473. July 17.