Band: Job for a Cowboy | Album: Moon Healer | Genre: Technical death metal, Progressive metal | Year: 2024
From: Glendale, USA | Label: Metal Blade
For fans of: The Faceless, early Opeth, Gorguts
When Job for a Cowboy first came onto the scene in the late ‘00s, I remember them being derided as just another deathcore band with a stupid name. I listened to some of their early work, and I agreed with that assessment. I don’t like deathcore, and their name is dumb. Seriously, it sounds like a lousy innuendo from a bro-country song. There are some bands I haven taken too long to give a shot because of how much I dislike their name (for example, Between the Buried and Me, And So I Watch You from Afar; pretty much any band whose name is a full clause), but JfaC is a band where my distaste for their name was backed up by a distaste for their music.
In the ensuing decade-and-a-half, though, they’ve taken a considerably more technical and progressive turn. When I saw Moon Healer rather high up on the 2024 chart on Rate Your Music, I was baffled. Aren’t these guys just some shitty deathcore band? I thought. My curiosity was piqued, so I gave Moon Healer a listen. I’m glad I did.
Dissonant, echoing guitars kick off “Beyond the Chemical Doorway”, and the verse is a tumbling, powerful storm. The bass playing is fantastic, and I like that its rather jazzy tone cuts through the thick layers of distortion on the guitars. The riffs are dizzying and complex, and the vocals straddle the line between black metal and death metal styles. What’s most notable here, though, is that the band’s passion is palpable. Tech-death is often plagued by virtuosic but unfeeling technicality for technicality’s sake. This composition is powerful, impactful, and affecting.
“Etched in Oblivion” flows naturally out of the preceding cut. This one is a bit less frantic, at least at first, but there’s still an unstoppable momentum to it. The band again flexes their skills, performing fretboard gymnastics alongside shockingly melodic passages.
Bass again gets its turn in the forefront at the opening of “Grinding Wheels of Ophanim”. This cut has more of a swirling, indistinct atmosphere to it. The guitars often ring out in overlapping layers, but Job for a Cowboy contrasts that approach against plenty of tight, show-offy playing. Things run a bit long on this song, but the riffs are inventive and varied enough that it’s not that big of a sin.
“The Sun Gave Me Ashes so I Sought out the Moon” is pummeling and frenetic. Jumpy guitar lines contrast wonderfully against bigger-sounding chords, and the soloing in this cut is a lot of fun. “Into the Crystalline Crypts” has some melodic soloing in its opening, and the verse is underpinned by a series of strong riffs. Parts of this song slow down to some of the doom-iest riffs on the album. By absolute standards, though, things remain high-energy.
The band deploys more harmonics than I like on “A Sorrow-Filled Moon”, but the underlying composition is strong enough to overcome that stylistic preference. This song’s ending is about as quiet as the band gets, and it serves as a great segue into “The Agony Seeping Storm”. This piece calls to mind some of the earliest years of tech-death as a genre. Between the riffing style and the hoarse vocals, this one reminds me a lot of some of Death’s best stuff.
Moon Healer closes on “The Forever Rot”. After a gradual fade-in, it turns into a heavy, chugging monster of a song. This is a weighty piece, and the band deftly jumps from musical idea to musical idea, all while maintaining a coherent structure. The song’s final 90 seconds features a bizarre, wobbly guitar tone, rubbery bass, and pitter-pattering tom patterns. It leads into an effective and explosive climax.
I’m very glad I set aside my preconceived notions of Job for a Cowboy for this record. It’s technical, exciting, and passionate. The songs veer all over the place, but there’s clearly a lot of planning and control to that chaos. Parts of the second half of this album can sound a bit samey at points, but it’s an overall impressive release.
Score: 82/100
The Elite Extremophile 