It isn’t very often that a band comes along, progressing, nay excelling through their genre evolution across various records, forever building upon their sound, while simultaneously maintaining their fanbase across genres. Arizona’s Job For A Cowboy is one such band. Don’t let the name of the band fool you, though probably a tongue-in-cheek name in the folly of their youth, this band is among the best the genre (or genres) has to offer.

Kicking off with the deathcore classic EP Doom back in 2003, their track “Entombment of a Machine” is still a frequent staple on us old deathcore fanboy’s playlists. Their first full-length, Genesis already showed a cross-over from traditional MySpace-era deathcore into more standard death metal territory. It wasn’t till 2009’s Ruination that JFAC began to raise the eyebrows of even the stogiest of death metal fans. With equal measures of techy yet catchy riffs, tracks like “Unfurling a Darkened Gospel”, “Regurgitated Disinformation”, and “Constitutional Masturbation” are standard bearers of how to make elegant riffs the centerpiece of your extreme metal song. They had already begun their switch away from death metal/core towards the proggier-techier side of metal on 2012’s Demonocracy with stellar tracks like “Tarnished Gluttony” evoking emotive eldritch horror.

For most of the “true” metalheads out there, it wasn’t till 2014’s Sun Eater that JFAC emerged from its cocoon and was properly appreciated by the technical death metal community. Reshaping their sound once more, delving into larger, more expansive passages and virtuosic arrangements, tracks like the tile track “Sun Eater” and “Eating the Visions of God” now stand as the prog deathcore champions to beat. Sadly, since 2014, JFAC dropped off the map, with nearly no live performances of Sun Eater and no news of further releases. Till eight years later, an eternity in our age of hyperconsumption. A near Necrophagist-esque wait and yearning for news. And here we are…

Moon Healer is upon us.

And it is exactly what we all needed, exactly what we deserve for our long watch.

Moon Healer is the thematic and sonic sequel to Sun Eater and feels very similar in tone and composition. However, it is a tighter, more cohesive, and extensively more impactful product. Released singles “The Agony Seeping Storm” and “The Forever Rot” were great choices, as they were stellar choices to showcase the songwriting and breadth that Moon Healer has to offer, and remain among the strongest tracks on the record. There is particular bravery to release your album closers as singles, yet JFAC was confident in their songs, and they delivered with much pomp. Tech death heads and deathcore fans rejoiced, and the singles were extremely well received. Uniting these camps is no easy feat, yet a band twenty years into their career know what they are doing.

Every track on Moon Healer is jam-packed with mood-swinging twists and turns. From expansive jammy, proggy sections, to razor-sharp passages, tied together with a melancholic melody, these tracks are journeys in their regards. “Grinding Wheels of Ophanim” is a great example of the band weaving in and out of the various pacings that their genre trappings offer. Job For A Cowboy have always been the masters of creating gigglingly-good song titles depending on the era they were in for that album cycle, and Moon Healer has among the best they have to offer. You cannot look at a title like “The Sun Gave Me Ashes, So I Sought Out the Moon” and not eagerly jump to see what the track is all about. A thematic call out to the sequel nature from Sun Eater, the track lives up to the emotion generated by the title. Other examples like “A Sorrow Filled Moon” and “The Agony Seeping Storm” have such a rhythmic fall to their names and serve as perfect counterfoils to each other.

Not to be overly gushing about an honestly superlative record, I do have nits to pick with Moon Healer, fully admitting that this showcases my own genre biases rather than any failing of the band. These same elements that I favor less, may be exactly what you’re looking for. Where Moon Healer tends to lose me (and where Sun Eater did as well), is the sometimes overly long upper register melancholic/dissonant arpeggiated sections that permeate every track. They have a way of grinding momentum to a halt and caused me to space out and cast them all into a vague prog background noise of sorts. This is truly unfortunate because it is undeniable the amount of effort that goes into writing and executing these dense sections. In my opinion, where JFAC truly shines is in the quicker more straight-laced tech-death sections. Fortunately, Moon Healer does give these higher BPM sections more runtime than Sun Eater did. Perhaps, my interest in this band was at its highest with Ruination and it serves as my benchmark.

The musicians in Job For A Cowboy are at the top of their craft. Guitarists Al Glassman and Tony Sannicandro showcase masterclasses in writing riffs that dance, that entice, that pummel, that groove, that emote, with seamless transition. Drummer Navene Koperweis features in his first JFAC record, though he is no stranger to the scene, being part of the OG deathcore gang in Animosity, writing his tech-death in Fleshwrought, and most recently, drumming and songwriting for the rising superstars in Entheos. A worthy replacement for both Jon Rice and Danny Walker (Sun Eater). Bassist Nick Schendzielos (Cephalic Carnage), is among the primary reasons why Sun Eater became the heatseeker record. His bass lines are so prominent and near-poetic in this newest iteration of the band’s sound, that it creates its own identity and further cements the band’s name among bands like Cynic, Atheist, Beyond Creation, Artificial Brain, etc. Vocalist Johnny Davy is as integral to the deathcore scene as the breakdown itself. Towering over all these young upstart kids, his fry rasp is recognizable from a mile away, and any deathcore fan worth their weight in salt knows his timbre on any track. His work on Moon Healer sounds just as strong as it did twenty years ago!

I can already tell that Moon Healer will already feature on many Album of the Year lists, and it comes out in February. Rejoice!

Moon Healer is the sequel to Sun Eater that everyone wanted, and everyone deserves. A progressive technical riff-laden emotionally evocative record, Job for a Cowboy continue to prove to us mortals that they have what it takes to write transcendentally brutal records. We can only hope that we don’t have to wait another decade for new material!