Heretical Sect – Rotting Cosmic Grief EP (Digipak CD)

HERETICAL SECT is a reclusive collective fixated on the physical and spiritual genocides of the Southwest.

The Southwest; represented through a nostalgic lense of cowboy culture, rarely exposes the most brutal atrocities of American history. Churches chained shut and lit on fire with the congregation inside, severed limbs piled in the streets, and disease and slavery are burned into the memory of the landscape. These horrors are sonically juxtaposed against the natural beauty of the high desert. Expansive skies, deep canyons, painted red rocks, all witnesses to untold butchery and grief.

HERETICAL SECT features members of other prominent Santa Fe (NM) bands, yet members remain hooded and anonymous. Although the band rarely appears live, it is a primary conceptual entity for its members. May all life learn to die.

“Heretical Sect is your new favorite band that you have never heard of! Over the course of four dense and intense tracks, they show you why they are bringing something new to the game. I don’t want to box them into a genre because their songs evoke a sense of dark freedom. I will say that if Bathory recorded under the southwestern sky while the rain of Temple Nightside fell down on them, part of the Heretical Sect sound would arise from the land they stand on. This band knows how to write riffs that will resonate with the listener for decades to come.”
– CVLT NATION

“This dynamic music sits at a desolate and dangerous crossroad where doom, death metal, and black metal meet. The sound burns and batters. Shards of eerily bright, preternatural melody spear out from seething riffs, booming bass, and racing drums. Cruel, cavernous growls and flensing shrieks vent colossal fury above that blazing tumult.
The music collapses, rapidly morphing into a titanic moaning dirge, digging a deep trench into tainted earth, surrounded by the sound of vaporous wraiths. The pace accelerates again, bounding and then rushing in a fiery surge, with those fanfares of bright but beleaguered melody leaping out once more. The feelings of frenzy and violence come back to the forefront. In this pulse-pounding crescendo, the guitar lead becomes an unnerving pulse and then a feverish disease over a thick magnetic riff.
What a hell of a thrilling (and chilling) ride this is, and a big draw for the rest of the EP (which is also superb).”
– NO CLEAN SINGING

“Dynamic by design, each track rises to glorious crescendo and falls to troubled depths…albeit each at its own unique pace. Simultaneously razor sharp and crudely honed, the best moments herein, of which there are many, remain as unshakable as a moonlit night terror.”
– Sleeping Village Reviews