Review: Job For A Cowboy - “Genesis”

I had heard the songs “Knee Deep”, “Entombment Of A Machine”, and “Entities” through free downloading provided by Job For A Cowboy. Those songs come off of the “Doom” EP. Those were some very well written grind/deathcore songs, so I was a bit surprised to find that the rest of the songs from the “Doom” EP were a bit more like filler. Although, I do have to say that Job For A Cowboy forged a unique signature sound right from the get-go.

“Genesis” improves upon all the good qualities that were there on the “Doom” EP. The band is now more extreme jumping from break-neck speeds to slow gloomy parts on the fly. The tempo jumps are some of the biggest and harshest I’ve heard in a long time. They’re tighter than ever before, no doubt from all the touring to support the previous effort. All the instruments are heavier and more powerful due to the good production, no doubt from the money that Metal Blade was willing do dump into this band to back them.

Jonny Davy has a signature voice, and could soon be competing with George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher for his technical word delivery of spouting off lots of words in a very catchy, rhythmic fashion. A slightly closer inspection of Jonny Davy’s vocals reveals that he isn’t quite pronouncing his vowels properly, and while he does pronounce his consonants, it’s almost as though he’s not saying the proper consonant when the time comes. Of course, if you’re not reading the wonderfully written lyrics along with the music, you’ll probably not notice these very minor shortcomings.

Lyrically the whole album is focussed on religious themes like Armageddon, conflict, and the uprising of evil. This could lead one to think that Job For A Cowboy are a Christian band, which may very well be true, but make no mistake, their message is definitely not an attempt to push any agenda. The religious aspect instead serves more as a backdrop to a story.

With the exception of the massive tempo jumps, the album is pure death metal, and at that, quite unlike any death metal band to date with such a different sound. The two guitar work seems to go through just about every combination of dual guitar work you can think of, from harmonies, solos, to bleak melodies on top of a rhythm guitar. If you listen hard, and I mean very hard, in a song or two you can hear some guitar trills similar to Cannibal Corpse. The band seems to love Suffocation styled drum blasts, and they’re used often with machine gun like firing from the snare drum. The slow, ultra heavy, gloomy, and atmospheric portions that show up in just about every song due to the tempo shifting nature, along with the constantly duelling guitars playing off of each other, to the instrumental segueways bring to mind Morbid Angel. The song “The Divine Falsehood” stands out as being a slow powerful song that takes some heavy inspiration from Morbid Angel. It’s just to bad that the song hangs on repeating itself on the second half, as it could’ve been an much more notable track.

Every song has some sort of moshable part for the metal crowd, if not several. To building up to fast crowd pleasers, to a slow steady pulse to make a circle pit, to some more choppier heavy breakdowns to bang ones head too, which might in fact get those pit ninjas and floor punchers jumping into the pit as well. There’s plenty of mosh to go around. Don't worry for those of you who don't like anything "core", as every breakdown is a metal style breakdown.

“Genesis” would get top score if there wasn’t something holding it back. The band knows how to turn just about every riff and vocal line into a hook, and most of the songs are spent attempting to build up to something. As a listener, sometimes you’ll reach that destination, typically being some sort of breakdown, and sometimes you won’t, and then song will just end. It’s seems with the inherently choppy nature of the tempo changes which sometimes seem akin to the introduction of thrash song, it’s as though many songs are constantly building up even right before the ending. Most of the songs are two and a half minutes long, so many could’ve used some rearranging bringing some other parts back, as they almost feel unfinished. At only thirty minutes, with build-ups and hooks all over the place, “Genesis” is like eating half of the best steak you’ve had in your life.

4.5/5

Job For A Cowboy
Job For A Cowboy At MySpace
Job For A Cowboy At PureVolume
Job For A Cowboy At Metal Blade