Sanctified Sister – Hybrid

Sanctified Sister
Hybrid
1997 (no label)
St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Possible Band Members:

Caprice Cummings – Lead vocals, background vocals, keys, and sequence programming
Justin DeTie – Lead guitars, rhythm guitars, sequence programming, background vocals
Chuck Cummings – Bass guitars
Jim Calvert – Drums, background vocals

1. Pharmakeia
2. Soup Bowl
3. Smaching
4. No Charges
5. All Day Rain
6. No Fear
7. Hood Jams
8. Jaded
9. Unguarded
10. Hold Tight
11. The Freedom

So first of all, I do want to acknowledge that the picture above is not the actual cover of this album, but more on that later. Sanctified Sister (later Sanctified Sistah) is a bit of a ghost band. I have found some information buried on archive.org about them, but for the longest time I couldn’t find ANY information or music from them anywhere. No songs on YouTube, no music for sale anywhere (even on eBay), no music share even on music share sites, nothing. In the archives, I did find this bio:

“When describing Sistah’s unique sound, fans call it “R&B Noise-pop, Trip-hop.” Soulful vocals, groove heavy guitar noise, beat loops with haunting keys, make up key element to the band’s cross genre appeal. The band’s first two CDs (Hybrid and H2 Ultra) were hailed as provocative, innovative and groundbreaking. The music according to one reviewer is: “a patchwork quilt that once together makes perfect sense. The listener is never under surprised by the huge amount of territory Sistah is able to cover.”

So obviously, I have really, really wanted to hear them. They were technically on a small label called Indie Dream Recordings that also put out music by Deliverance and Sombrance (some of the other bands on that label are more impossible to find that Sanctified Sister). But no luck for years. Finally, their Promotional Demo from 1995 was shared online and I got a tiny taste (“Jaded” is the only song re-recorded from that demo here). But I still wanted to hear their full lengths. I mean, this is how Hybrid was described:

“The blisteringly heavy silk of Sanctified Sister’s lead singer permeates every nook and cranny of their new release Hybrid. The CD’s title goes a long way toward describing the many styles an influences that are evident on this work. There are bits of fission, fusion, and soul bonded with pieces of metal, dance, and gospel, all stitched into a patchwork quilt that once together makes perfect sense. The music seems to peer out at you from a dark corner of the room and whisper to get the point across and then suddenly emerge right into your face for a few seconds only to return to it’s vigilance in the corner a few moments later. The listener is never under-surprised by the huge amount of territory Sanctified Sister is able to cover.”

A copy of this on tape appeared on eBay, and I wasn’t sure if it was really Hybrid since the cover was different than what I had found online:

But it went on sale, so I took a chance, and it is the full album. Then, a few weeks after I got the tape, someone uploaded the CD to YouTube. Oh, well. The album sounds as awesome as you would expect it. The tape cover at the top of this post is actually the inside of Fifth Column Fetish’s demo. Someone basically dubbed a copy of the album to a blank cassette, took the j-card from that demo, turned it inside out, and wrote “Sanctified Sister – Hybrid” on the spine. So, no – Perry Bathous of FCF is not in the band. Sanctified Sister/Sistah looked like this:

(since I don’t have the details on this CD, I don’t know who was in the band at the time or who did what – the list at the top is a possible member list based on what I pulled from archive.org.)

So I don’t know if the band made this tape to send a pre-release copy in for review somewhere, some fan dubbed a copy and sent it in, or what. The tape actually breaks the song “Hood Jams” in two due to the end of the tape (the person that made this didn’t back up and start over when the tape ended). They also added the first two songs from The Call’s The Best of the Call compilation at the end as well. The follow up album to this – H2 Ultra (1998) – was a six song ep of new songs and remixes. They also have two more CDs – We Tried to Tell Ya (date unknown) and Shadowlands (2022). Of course, I haven’t heard those – hopefully someone will put them on YouTube or sell some copies on eBay some day. Or maybe even the Indie Dream people will put their catalog on BandCamp or something some day? They aren’t even on Discogs. This all needs to be fixed!