The Saint of the Pit, Diamanda Galás’ fifth studio album and the second in her trilogy, The Masque of the Red Death, is an urgent record. Its theme is essentially passion, in the sense of suffering, although here, and unlike the passion of Christianity, there is little to offer solace. Re-released on Galás’ own Intravenal Sound Operations (ISO) after its initial release on Mute in November 1986, The Saint and the Pit is a masterpiece of witnessing, forged from grief and fury during the HIV-AIDS epidemic. While its precursor, The Divine Punishment (originally Mute, now ISO), released only five months before in June 1986, invoked Old Testament laws around the clean and the unclean, as a way of raging against the inhumanity of systemic neglect of people with HIV-AIDS, this album is focussed on a more interior response.
The Saint of the Pit was an urgent record and now, nearly 40 years on, it remains an urgent record because, ultimately, its major theme is not limited to HIV-AIDs, but profound suffering. It is this music’s capacity to bear witness, to wrap a humanity around another’s pain, to hear that anguish, that gives The Saint and the Pit its continuing relevance.
