Present Day, June 18, 2026
The full arc of Sanctified Hunger, as briefly as I can describe it:
Well Trained is the precondition: the systematic surrender of judgment that institutions require before they can operate without resistance. I Was Never Yours is the refusal: the declaration that the self was never available for institutional ownership regardless of what the institution claimed. Litany of Dust is the empty performance: the prayer said so many times it has become noise, devotion that has calcified into ritual and forgotten what the ritual was for.
The Fate We Let Arise is the indictment of passivity: what accumulates when witness refuses to become action. Their Final Test is the reckoning: the moment when the institution faces the judgment it has been assigning to everyone else. I Am He is the false messiah: the man who has found in institutional language the perfect container for his own appetite.
Observed Devotion is the view from outside. The Damned is the inversion: who the institution actually condemns and why. You Are is the direct address. Holy War is five centuries of watching violence dressed in vestments. I Am Crying is the cost of witness finally admitted. In My Name is the last word: the closing document, the accounting of what has been done in the name of something holy.
Plus, for those who purchase directly at morellarecords.com: a cover of XTC’s Dear God. Andy Partridge asked the question in 1986. I have been asking it since 1473. July 17.