Review by Saxy S for Job for a Cowboy - Moon Healer (2024)

The career trajectory of Job For A Cowboy has certainly been a fascinating one to follow. Arguably considered one of the first bands to popularize deathcore during the mid 2000s and helped to spawn the debate as to whether deathcore is even death metal at all with its patchy structure and metalcore breakdowns. Of course, by the time this conversation began going mainstream, Job had already moved on to more straightforward death metal anyway!

Now I did find some of JFAC’s (Job For A Cowboy) later records as decent (i.e. Ruination & Demonocracy), but given my progressive metal wormhole during post-secondary, they were a band that I never paid that much attention to. Now it’s been just over ten years since Sun Eater and JFAC are back with a new record that is more progressive than ever before.

And there are certain elements that are worth the price of admission. The independent bass lines are gorgeous and help the band distinguish differing timbres or textures at any given time. When the bass is near its low end, songs are crushing, when those bass lines are soaring, the intensity is unrelenting. Guitars are less noodly with more open power chords, and Jonny Davy’s vocals are intense. Compositionally, Moon Healer is more a progressive album than a technical one. I think it is important to distinguish between them because those expecting a Dying Fetus-esque assault from top-to-bottom might leave feeling disappointed. What this album reminds me of more is if what if Gojira made death metal. As for JFAC themselves, the more progressive shift means structurally, Moon Healer is more focused on melodic/harmonic repetition for memorization and enjoyability.

The record is produced very well. All you must do is listen to those bass lines on “Etched in Oblivion” and “Into the Crystalline Crypts” to hear this. It isn’t as clean as a recent Dying Fetus album, but this has more life put into it. JFAC are also aware of their past as well as a deathcore band and occasionally you’ll hear passages on “A Sorrow-Filled Moon” that break the immersion and feels like a subtle wink to the audience instead of a well incorporated idea.

Despite the positivity, I feel the same way about Moon Healer as I did with Tomb Mold’s The Enduring Spirit last year. It’s a good album, and I would recommend it to progressive metal fans trying to get into the more technical side. But it feels lacking in some way; as if the technical death metal aspects were not fully realized and took a backseat to the progressive techniques. If JFAC took the concepts of progressive metal and laid them on top of some punishing technical death metal, I think Moon Healer would have been great.

Best Songs: Etched in Oblivion, Grinding Wheel of Ophanim, Into the Crystalline Crypts, The Forever Rot