Job for a Cowboy – Moon Healer
Release Date: 23rd February 2024
Label: Metal Blade
Bandcamp
Genre: Progressive Death Metal
FFO: Nile, Cattle Decapitation, The Black Dahlia Murder.
Review By: Jeff Finch
As of the writing of this review, 2/18/24, it has been 3,386 days since Job for a Cowboy dropped their progressive death metal masterpiece Sun Eater. Almost 10 full years of waiting; in recent memory, bands that have had a similar length of time between albums are Tool and The Mars Volta, both of whom (subjectively) dropped some of their best work in those releases. 10 years is a long time to wait, so surely the wait for the new Job for a Cowboy couldn’t live up to the massive hype created with such a hiatus. Surely not?
Wrong. Wrong on every level. With Moon Healer, what Job for a Cowboy has done is take what they left us with back in 2014 and somehow made it even more progressive, even more technical, less easily digestible and, most importantly, more Job for a Cowboy than ever before.
First single off the record The Agony Seeping Storm is a song rife with melody, speed, technical prowess, and, something that might be lacking in music today, genuine care. Blast beats, riffs, a bass that pops from the speakers, and the guttural mastery of Johnny Davy, the song is everything the band prepared us for with Sun Eater, only somehow more. A blistering guitar solo opens the track, bass rumbling from the speakers, Nick Schendzielos sounding like the love child of Ryan Martinie of Mudvayne and the incomparable Les Claypool, before Johnny Davy wows with his shrieks to open before digging deep into his gutturals, swallowing his damn tongue, a visceral, acerbic delivery that only he can deliver to match the intensity of the instruments surrounding him. By the time the chorus hits, we’ve already been pummeled from every angle, the ensuing guitar solo, courtesy of Tony Sannicandro, leading into a brief respite of pure melody prior to unfettered ferocity as the solo reaches its apex, a thing of beauty, Job for a Cowboy flawlessly and seamlessly transitioning, this first taste of new music satiating us listeners.
What the band did in dropping The Agony Seeping Storm, however, is more than just prepare us for the rest of the album by giving us a small taste: what they proved, what they set out to do, is display a maturation in their compositions; Sun Eater is still a masterpiece, and Moon Healer feels like the proper continuation of that sound, with 10 years to refine and make sure that every note is where it needs to be. It sounds like Stanley Kubrick levels of perfectionism had a hand in this record. The clean guitar passages that open Beyond the Chemical Doorway set the tone, immediately despondent, dark, just as the opener from Sun Eater. The tempo shifts, the time signature changes, they’re immaculate, the band shifting from blistering intensity, blast beats and chaos, to mid-tempo jams, the riffs and bass popping from the speakers as drummer Navene Koperweis destroys his kit, the mathcore beats jaw-droppingly technical as the foundation of the maelstrom hitting us from every angle.
Etched in Oblivion and Grinding Wheels of Ophanim are mid-paced thrill rides, compositions that take us on a journey of soundscapes, clean downtuned riffs punctuating as the band methodically, logically moves from one part of a song to next, each instrument reinserting itself into the fold individually, a guitar solo waiting for us at the end, fretwork freneticism at play, the listener caught in a tug of war with themselves, not wanting to stop to appreciate but almost needing to take a breath out of sheer wonder, the pure musical high that a band out of the mix for almost a decade could create, the complexity a puzzle to solve but one that’s welcome with open arms, for to understand the puzzle is to understand the band and how they pulled this off.
Final, and longest, track on the album, The Forever Rot, slowly builds up into a crescendo nearing the one-minute mark, wherein the bass and drums meet the guitars for the final journey together, and what a journey it is. The shredding, emotionally driven solo leaves room for the bass and the drums to share center stage, almost removing the ‘solo’ nature, no one instrument fighting for attention, the soundscape, easily perceived as chaotic, a brilliantly technical showcase before Johnny comes back with a shriek that he holds right down to the depths, the bass piercing through, thumping, popping, biding its time until Davy comes back with a black metal wail, blast beats quickly entering and exiting, the band taking a breath with a pause, roaring back into the mix, a solo ripping through the speakers as the song nears the end, the final ten seconds pure silence, as the listener has their moment to breathe, to understand what they’ve just heard, the intensity and unrepentant mastery on full display for just shy of 40 minutes.
10 years in the making, 40 minutes in length, but not something that can be understood in one sitting. Moon Healer is going to take numerous, several, dozens of listens to pick up everything presented to us; when the linear notes are in hand, take a look at the lyrics that Davy and crew have given us to ruminate over. What Job for a Cowboy have done after a nearly 10 year hiatus is nothing short of masterful: a band not resting on their laurels, not willing to give listeners something that wasn’t completely perfect in their own way; by way of taking the technicality of Sun Eater and somehow making it even more difficult to digest, the band have proven to the world they are purveyors of some of the finest metal on the planet. Make no mistake with this one, if you like Job for a Cowboy or are a fan of just purely immersive instrumentation that displays technical mastery, Moon Healer is for you.
(5 / 5)
