Presumably, the New Mexico where the blackened death/doom quartet Heretical Sect blossomed from, like a planter's bed full of venomous, carnivorous birthwort, is different from the one you see in targeted ads, that (pre-pandemic) advertised time-shares and winter-getaways to the frozen denizens of the upper-midwest. It's also, presumably, the same. Real or imagined, the reference point for both is a place with a largely invisible history.
Most people who identify themselves as Americans, and Americans first, understand that at some point in the past, New Mexico was inducted into the Union of the United States after having been a territory (or something like that). How this exactly happened is a bit of a mystery, though. Maybe God tucked the deed to all that land in a pie and mailed it to the White House for William Taft's birthday in 1912. No, that's a lie. There is also no mystery to it, either. If you think there is, that's a lie too. New Mexico was acquired like the rest of the western United States, through a series of colonialist and expansionist wars, in this case, against Mexico. The victory against the former Spanish subjects saw the US taking what is now Texas and a large part of Southern California for reasons that would require me to explain the entire pre-Civil War political landscape of the era to make sense of... and even then the answer just boils down to people with money and property wanting more money and property. To be fair, the US Government did pay for the land it acquired following the war (to the tune of $10 Million), but of course, none of that money went to the people who actually lived on, and unutilized that land to feed themselves and their families. People like the native Pueblo and Hopi tribes, as well Mexican nationals and other folks the Spanish colonists moved up there to build their empire. That history alone goes back to the mid-sixteenth century. Truly, it is a land whose flesh bears the long, deep scars of swindle and toil.
Rapturous Flesh Consumed examines much of the history of New Mexico, if not from a trans-historical or anthropological standpoint, then from a mystical and emotional one, but is able to draw many of the same conclusions. Centered on the bestial practices of Spanish missionary, Fray Salvador de Guerra, whose maniacal ministerial practices concerning the Hopi natives (barbaric measures that included reopening wounds, previously inflicted by his whip, and pouring boiling hot turpentine into them) eventually lead to his trial and (ahem) demotion. As gruesome as these practices were, historical accounts are quick to point out that they were not uncommon methods of disciplining slaves in the seventh century. The offense caused to his fellow friers sprang instead from the fact that these common punishments were being used as a conversation tool. A fact which made the Franciscan order who oversaw the mission... uncomfortable, not horrified, just uneasy. They, therefore, made an example of Guerra, stripping him of his duties through legal channels available to them through the Catholic Chuch. Guerra however remained at his convent following the trial, he just no longer had anything left to do now that he was no longer allowed to continue his work, torturing the love of his god into the native population.
The banal response of Spanish religious authorities to the horrific mutilations that Guerra committed in the name of the Chuch is something that Heretical Sect extrapolate on and expand to come to an understanding of the entire project of colonial expansion that produced the present borders American Empire. With sulfurous guitar-tones that conjure an atmosphere submerged in and dampened by blood, they demonstrate how the blunting of human reason can be made to serve the logic of power. How the human conscience can be replaced with a kettle of venomous snakes. How hollowing one's soul can lead someone to the conclusion that the mutilation of another human by someone who is only following order you handed down to them, can be seen, not as an affront to basic human morals, but rather, a "bad look."
