14th February 2024
In November 2014, death metal's Job For A Cowboy released the almost universally acclaimed Sun Eater. It heralded an increasingly experimental, complex and progressive approach to songwriting and style. The band originally discussed releasing new music some seven years ago; however, circumstances led to over a nine year wait for new album Moon Healer. "I had to take a step back in the band for family. It was the catalyst that eventually created a fork in the road for all of us. We all drifted into our separate paths," explains frontman and band co-founder Jonny Davy. "Fatherhood, additional music projects, academic degrees, and careers outside the band took priority and life's focus," so the band agreed on a prolonged hiatus, but with the door open for a return. "Everything lined up for us to collaborate on a new project together, it was time to cross the threshold for something new," states Davy.
For any band, releasing an album almost a decade after their last – particularly one that was much loved by fans - carries a certain weight of expectation. With Moon Healer, Job For A Cowboy have played it the only they know how: to hell with anyone’s pre-conceived ideas of what a new album should be, expand even more deeply on the lyrical ideas of Sun Eater and head even further into the abyss of experimentation, conceptual lyrics, volatility and aggression.
In Davy’s words, “Sun Eater was an arrangement of melodies inspired by a close friend of the band who lost touch with reality due to excessive hard drug use. They believed the drugs were providing them with eye-opening epiphanies. They didn't have the self-awareness that they were falling further down the depths of their own mental illness.” Moon Healer takes the inspirations behind its predecessor and pushes the idea to the limit. “The concepts in the album follow someone attempting to explore a different human existence," explains Davy. "They considered themselves a pseudo-alchemist. They cook mind-altering consumables. But contrary to what others viewed as their descent into delusion, they are under the belief that they are unlocking the gateway to some form of profound enlightenment."
With the protagonist about to embrace transformations that are both terrifying and enlightening, Beyond the Chemical Doorway begins the album with an unsettling and disturbing purpose. Echoing, bleak bass reverberates, immediately spreading alarming distrust and the sinister, malefic emotions of a harbinger. The rest of the band join with hostile pugnacity and Davy begins his truculent attack. From the opening lyrics, it is abundantly apparent that Moon Healer will bend the mind of the listener and demand complete commitment to gain a full understanding of its secrets. Horrors of lower gnostic realms have been crusted shut and are never to be unsealed / A crystallized coating obscures unravelling hells from my occultic eye, forever to be congealed / But this membrane decalcifies, it exposes the organ of souls / It bestows an immense gravity, weaving subatomic black holes. As an opening statement, Beyond the Chemical Doorway paves the way for much of what is to come. Abandoning traditional song structures and leaving interconnecting labyrinthine layers of musical devastation, Job For A Cowboy welcome us into their macabre and deleterious domain.
Etched in Oblivion begins with a colossal, groove laden riff, which leads towards some of the most bellicose music on the album. However, such is the depth of thought behind the songwriting, this aggression is punctuated with moments of quiet but despairing musical melancholy such as just before Davy growls in angst-ridden torture, backed with woeful yet melodic guitar. She lay what was left of my head atop her lap / Beginning the process of healing my choking flame / Severed and unbound is my celestial umbilical cord, I alone! I alone to blame! Disconnected from reality and caught in a state of sorrow, we are left to watch as the protagonist explores an immense but indifferent universe.
Named after the celestial beings in Merkabah or Kabbalistic lore, Grinding Wheels of Ophanim, crosses several musical styles: four minutes of blisteringly paced acerbity, an initially doom-laded and then increasingly technical progressive section, before returning to the explosive vitriol of the opening minutes. Nick Schendzielos’s bass is innovative and compelling. His partnership with session drummer Navene Koperweis (ex-Animosity and current Entheos member) is testament to the talismanic chemistry within the band.
The experimentation and desire to navigate new territory throughout Moon Healer is no surprise to the band. "The evolution of our sound has become a big part of the band," Davy says. "As we mature as musicians, our tastes and interests naturally expand. With age comes more experience and ideas that we wouldn't have considered in our earlier years.” Despite this evolution, this does in no way mean that Job For A Cowboy are unrecognisable or have discarded everything that made Sun Eater so appealing. The Sun Gave Me Ashes So I Sought Out The Moon and Into The Crystalline Crypts are packed with elaborate interplay between the guitars of Al Glassman and Tony Sannicandro, the latter producing some dizzyingly fast and technical solos such as that in the latter of these songs.
While the album is inimical and challenging, there is a rancorous cohesiveness to the overall sound. Working again with producer Jason Suecof, who has already collaborated on three previous records with Job For A Cowboy, the band had previously developed a strong rapport with him, establishing a level of trust and familiarity. "Jason Suecof has a supernatural ear in the ability to find hidden potential in music," Davy says about the time in the studio. “He has an ear for ideas that very few seemingly have. He totally understands where we're coming from as a band."
Moon Healer is a journey through pummelling riffs, incursive vocals and a barrage of virulent rhythms, which continues on A Sorrow-Filled Moon and The Agony Seeping Storm. First single from the album - The Agony Seeping Storm – references the Emerald Tablet and other Hermetic texts. As above, so below / As within, so without / As the universe, so the soul. Stretching their technicality to the limit, The Agony Seeping Storm sees the band construct a hammering slab of unrestrained and ferocious death metal, portraying the unbridled tension between seeking enlightenment and the danger of being overwhelmed by the darker, chaotic aspects of the self.
Closer and longest track on the album, The Forever Rot, is a contender for the most adventurous piece on Moon Healer. Beginning silently and building towards a gargantuan riff, as the emotional numbness crushes our protagonist, we question what it really means to exist. Davy snarls with guttural torment as he delivers the vocal, I no longer sense a ghost inside my carbon-based vessel / The grief is horrendous. In a truly agonising moment, there is a feeling of finality about the song. As my fleshed flame was quenched with gloom / The eternal darkness took my soul to consume / I can overhear my shadow's dimming cry / It wept and said, “Only that of which can destroy itself is truly alive.” Four and half minutes in, The Forever Rot changes direction leading to the last words and another technically stunning, melodic but nightmarish guitar solo. No longer was I to be revived / My body had been purged, bathed by the sound of flies. It is a spectacular ending.
At forty minutes, Moon Healer is not a long album but such is the depth of brutality and scope of endeavour, that there is more than enough to challenge and incentivise the determined listener both musically and lyrically. There may have been an almost decade to wait for Job For A Cowboy to complete the dark odyssey they began with Sun Eater but they have ensured that Moon Healer throws down the gauntlet to other extreme metal bands once again.
Moon Healer is released on 23rd February 2024.
Watch the video for Beyond the Chemical Doorway below.
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