You won’t find many bands that conclude a back-to-back thematic album release after a ten year gap. It feels perfectly fitting for Arizona’s Job For A Cowboy, where going by the book was never the plan.
Back in 2006 as a fresh-faced high schooler I’d never listened to death metal in my life. Luckily, it found me (eventually) by way of Job For A Cowboy’s rather large deathcore arrival, the outrageously punishing kind the scene kids venerated. Despite never getting the band name (and I still don’t, but came to terms with not caring), the Doom EP’s businessman deer carcass will always be remembered as grimly protruding from a cracked iPod Classic screen. There was that Entombment Of A Machine pig squeal moment being deathcore’s very own “What the fuck is up, Denny’s?”, and they even got a commendation from Demi Lovato. They’re the stuff of lore having captured the MySpace era with aplomb. Not that their history ever ended there.
The following lack of love seems weird because, after all, that young outfit was great. Talented technically and clearly business-brained to break beyond small areas of the internet to reach more eyes. Admirably altering their sound to avoid the -core suffix and pigeon-holed memery (which they were always well beyond anyway), they became the band that hung around rather than the ones that led the way. After leaving those dusty fields from the Entombment video, they seemingly ran out of favour while the likes of Suicide Silence endured. But now in a time when Lorna Shore have made deathcore cool again, Job For A Cowboy has returned to cap off the two-step mystical journey started by 2014’s Sun Eater.
There’s not much deathcore here, mind you. The bopping Grinding Wheels Of Ophanim breakdown-like call out screams and grooves may be the closest you’ll get, but there’s way more continuation in their musically diverse space-age stuff. That Cynic style has reached its critical peak since Blood Incantation’s excellent breakout, and vocalist Jonny Davy marks the last original Cowboy standing. The rest of the band, a whole new look featuring Animosity drummer Navene Koperweis from those elder days, bring brightness to the fold in sound and mood. For all that life has disrupted band activity—fatherhood, academia and career changes—Moon Healer’s drop is not just a testament to a savvy band still plugging away. They’re clearly enjoying it, flipping the devastating drug-addled delusion theme of Sun Eater on its head to something more like an enlightenment, with the occasional Jungian ego death.
This mystic story (through titles like Beyond The Chemical Doorway and Into The Crystalline Crypts) feels like an accomplished feat for a band that would, in Davy’s words, ‘slowly chip away’ through songs since 2018. His growls sound mighty while the swirling instruments interchange shuffle and speed with one swing of the stick. Jazzy sections (as in Etched In Oblivion) offer the chance for each player to explore. The song’s never overstay their welcome neither, packing vibrant sonic explorations, almost danceable beats, blasts, virtuosic soloing, and gloomy minor runs tightly into each package. And every chapter amounts to a wonderful sum-of-parts.
Even with this record playing out as one journey, there’s no one-note dynamics going on. It’s tapestry rich. Into The Crystalline Crypts’ building starter and churned midsection show restraint, as catch and pull as the suitably titled The Agony Seeping Storm which feels very much like being thrown into a whirlwind. In both cases, the plucky bass is left to its own devices, not overpowering the other instruments’ in its playing, although the high place in the mix does make it punch through the headphones unusually. That’ll never negate the fun being had, particularly the ridiculously cheeky fill in the latter. The new purpose of making music for the thrill of it is obvious alongside the unfinished business of completing the dual album idea. It’s lucky that the better songwriting chops also shine, with Davy’s rasp and the melodic sections both mimicking Opeth’s progressive death metal primetime.
As an amalgam of all the minute ear-pricking moments that pop up all over the gaff, The Forever Rot feels triumphant in its sign-off. If it was ever to mark the end for Job For A Cowboy, rot would ironically be a delightful last note to ring, but it feels the sonic adventure won’t end here. No matter the lineup, there’s chops across their whole discography and Moon Healer could, and should, mark a rejuvenation for the listener as well as the group that constructed it. A joy for tech-death lovers and those that admire the experimental side to heavy music that’s not all trudging chugs and pinch harmonics, this feels the start of renewed justice for the band that ultimately got this reviewer into death metal in the first place. Welcome back.
For fans of: Fit For An Autopsy, Gorguts, Tomb Mold
Words by Elliot Burr
‘Moon Healer’ by Job For A Cowboy is released on 23rd February on Metal Blade Records.
