Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Job for a Cowboy > Sun Eater > Reviews
Job for a Cowboy - Sun Eater

Another unexpected change - 90%

Beast of Burden, September 13th, 2018
Written based on this version: 2014, CD, Metal Blade Records (Digipak)

Nowadays, when I think of Job for a Cowboy, the first thing I turn to isn't Genesis. It isn't Doom, either. It's this. Their fourth, mosrt recent full-length record released once again under Metal Blade Records shows the band continuing to grow technically, compositionally, and most importantly, musically.

Sun Eater marks yet another change in the Job for a Cowboy soundscape. This time instead of gnawing their teeth deeper into the sordid underbelly of corrupt politics and dirty underhanded corporate goings on using technically proficient death metal, they've decided to dig their claws wholly into the realms of fantasy and the supernatural using a dizzying, more progressive side of death metal. It's not uncommon for bands to touch on topics far and away different from what they're used to, but this time, it seems like JFAC is really leaving their comfort zone in terms of their writing because they've written something unique that stands out boldly from every other release up until this point.

Jonny Davy and his team have composed of nine songs adding up to 46 minutes of progressive death metal goodness. Swirling labyrinthine guitar passages from dual guitarists Alan Glassman and Toni Sannicandro give the album a palatable taste that sounds a little less technical than previous releases, yet is a bit more approachable and less savage in its approach, leaving you with songs that are easier to digest than on Demonocracy. I enjoyed that album, but I felt the production and the intense battery of insane playing made the album a bit too much to take in on top of sounding a bit too generic to stand out in a crowd of a thousand other technical death metal bands. To me, this album feels like a conscious move to adapt their sound more in a drastic attempt to avoid being pigeonholed even more into the most faceless sub-genre in death metal history. I have to give the band props, they succeeded with Sun Eater.

Once more, Davy's vocals continue to be as indecipherable as ever. One reviewer pointed out on one of their albums his vocal style is the equivalent of screaming with a swollen tongue. I happen to think he sounds more like he's swallowing it instead. But however his vocals sound like to whoever listens, it's almost impossible to make out what he says without the lyric sheet in front of you. You'll be thankful because in my opinion, Davy is one of the most darkly poetic writers. I have two favorite songs on here related to that. The first would be "Encircled by Mirrors," where Davy elucidates in short, albeit visually stunning detail about teeth gnawing through his eyes to give him clarity of perspective, or perhaps the potential to conceive of a newly discovered reality within his own pathologically warped psyche.

A sample from that:

"Through my reflection
Things are becoming clearer
Apparently teeth
Are beginning to germinate from the roots of my eyes

I find myself wincing
As they chew through my optic flesh

Layers of teeth
Dancing, waltzing
Their way out of my now punctured face"
-Track 7, Encircled by Mirrors


The other one is "The Synthetic Sea," which features guest vocals from current Cannibal Corpse and ex-Monstrosity vocalist George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher. This song I really appreciate lyrically because of its bluntness where it seems to be taking a direct shot at organized religion and the complacent way we as a species feed our collective ignorance to the belief in a nascent God that is not evidenced to have ever existed. The way we put our trust in the priests, church leaders, and false prophets whose only intent is to deceive is put on clear display in this song. It's as the song says, we are so simple, so damned naive. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Two more things about this album that's great are the bass and drums. Nick Schendzielos, their bassist, replaced Brent Riggs after Ruination, and while Brent Riggs was the cog in their wheel and contributed some amazing bass work to the band that's memorable and awesome, Nick serves to be a fine replacement. His technique on their last full-length shone through in the production which gave his bass a really vicious thump, though how it was produced sacrificed some of the low end for a kind of trebly up-front rumble that ultimately sounded run of the mill. At the end of it all, I assure you, Nick Schendzielos is no run of the mill bassist. This man knows his stuff. The production style here is a huge change of direction. It sounds like it was deliberately mixed in a way that made the bass stand out the most. It clearly is the most dominating instrument, that goes without question, meaning you can easily hear the bass without any problems. And to be honest, his performance here is not bad. Not bad at all. "Sun of Nihility" is clearly his best performance yet with JFAC. Session drums were handled on this album by Danny Walker. While we don't get the same unbridled head spinning technicality of The Charn, Danny Walker still proves his meddle. The drop in obvious technical drum work is no great loss on the part of the band since there's still plenty of crazy work going on behind the kit to keep one guessing.

The album ends with the six-minute dirge, "Worming Nightfall." Job for a Cowboy has always been known for their epic closers. This song is no exception. With its crawling pace that has that early progressive doom/death vibe akin to Opeth and every band member continuing to impress, each minute that passes leaves you wanting more by the time it ends. Maybe a bonus track or a couple live cuts of their older material would've made this album even more delicious to own because this album is like a drug. Once I finish, I always need more. Just a spot, y'know?

Lately, we've not seen the band be very active. Their tour bus caught fire, destroying all their equipment, and they haven't performed live in almost two years. Who knows what the future holds in store for Job for a Cowboy and their very divisive fanbase. Their reputation in the metal world may be spotty, but I will say this. Regardless of what trials await these four individuals, they will always have a special place in my dark heart. So will this album.

You got me sold - 80%

Dead1, February 18th, 2016
Written based on this version: 2014, CD, Metal Blade Records (Digipak)

I will admit that I was never a Job For A Cowboy fan. They were OK but I found them to be too noisy at times, too faceless at others and, very often, just average. Just another modern death metal band, for the most part.

And then they released Sun Eater.

This is one hell of an ambitious sounding album. It pushes Job For A Cowboy to a new level.

Firstly, this album sounds absolutely sumptuous. Death metal seldom sounds this great. The mix and production are extremely well balanced with every component fitting in perfectly. Even the drums are slightly lower in the mix and allow the guitars and bass to shine.

Nick Schendzeilos's bass playing is especially a treat. It hearkens back to the formative age of progressive and technical death metal in the 1990s and evokes the likes of Tony Choy, Steve Di Giorgio and Roger Patterson. Then there's those stunning guitar solos and riffage galore. Interestingly enough, at times the riffs and overall vibe are reminiscent of early Mastodon or Opeth's more brutal moments. Overall it still sounds like Job For A Cowboy, but more mature and more confident.

The music itself is more mid-tempo and melodic than many previous efforts. Unlike so many bands such as Revocation that flounder in mid-tempo stuff, Job For A Cowboy do it in style for the most part. Songs like "Encircled In Mirrors" are downright catchy, not a term used often with technical death metal.

As with anything, there are some minor criticisms. Some of these are related to general issues with modern death metal and especially the more technical side of it. Due to the massive variety of riffs within each song, it means that sometimes the songs tend to blur into each other. In the 1990s this was often avoided through instrumental interludes such as on Testimony Of The Ancients or Blessed Are The Sick, but this isn't really used much in the 21st century and certainly not on this album. In any case Sun Eater offers enough delicious music to make this a minor issue.

On Sun Eater, Job For A Cowboy have finally released an album that cements them not only as a top tier death metal band but perhaps even a top tier metal band. Even if the success of Sun Eater is nowhere close to the musings of this scribe, at least they have gained one new fan.

Culinary Celestial Excess - 68%

autothrall, November 28th, 2014
Written based on this version: 2014, CD, Metal Blade Records (Digipak)

Man, where to even start with this one? Sun Eater, the lesser of two death metal-related albums to bear that title in 2014, and Job for a Cowboy's fourth full-length, is an exercise in variation and ability which at the very least sounds like it required a lot of effort in both its conception and execution. The question is, whether or not that was all worth it? My answer is very, very nearly. This is not a band that I'd ever accuse of having a 'personality', despite the quirky name, which many have already ranted over but at least isn't just another -tion, -tory, for you to file away under redundant. Once they shifted away from their insipid meathead deathcore roots into a more decidedly West Coast approximation of modern, semi-tech death which traced its lineage to all the 'right' acts in the field (Suffocation, Morbid Angel, Deicide and Cannibal Corpse could all be heard in the controlled chaos), they seemed to translate into a more respectable, though still highly divisive act. I've enjoyed a few of their efforts (Demonocracy, Genesis, etc) to an extent, but greatness has ever eluded the Arizona quartet, and despite a very painstakingly wrought effort here, it still does...

Much like Fallujah transformed into a modern approximation of classic Cynic, with whirlwind technicality alternated against a more ambient/jazzy fusion, Job for a Cowboy have done the next best thing and decided to channel Atheist. Alright, not exactly, but a number of times I was sitting through this I kept getting Unquestionable Presence impressions, with some of the cleaner guitar patterns reminiscent also of Gorguts' Obscura. This is an acrobatic, eccentric slab of technical death and thrash metal which goes to great lengths to try and distinguish itself from its aesthetic ancestors, applying a modern studio context to their now antiquated, but once innovative ideas. But like so many other young death metal bands with athletic instrumental skill, it seems to rely a little too much on its own frenetic diversity and not on the strong songwriting chops that will make or break a death metal record throughout eternity. I'm not saying Sun Eater is void of a few gorgeous lead sequences, or riffs that perk my interest, but where The Flesh Prevails became this largely consistent pendulum of ethereal melodies and butchering brutality, this one just never develops much of an identity beyond the 'hey, wow, listen to that' mentality, where you're temporarily blown away by a band's proficiency set and not at any risk of remembering what they are actually setting down.

Oh, don't get me wrong, this one is compelling...to an extent. Jonny Davy's gruesome snarls and growls are splattered all over the polished, punchy instrumentation like cattle organs in some spit-shined slaughterhouse whose death machines are fresh off the assembly line. But did I like them? Nah, they try really hard but accomplish little since he just can't contort them into interesting syllabic patterns. Danny Walker's guest drumming on this is technically brilliant but I found a few of the components like the snares and toms to feel a little too Tupperware at points. The bass is amazing in general, with lines highly similar to those used in prog thrash and prog death classics like Control and Resistance, Unquestionable Presence, Focus, etc, and there are parts of the album where I really felt like I could just listen to Nick Schendzielos isolated from the rest of the band and be happy. But at the same time, it's actually the Glassman/Sannicandro guitar duo which keeps the busiest, and offers us the most contrast and variation between the different levels of distorted excess. The album boasts a Jason Suecof production with Eyal Levi and several other engineers, so you know it's going to have that pristine, clinical 21st century death metal gloss that most of the 'forward thinking' acts strive towards, but then again that's just not anything new at this point.

Effort was extended towards the lyrics, also, but they end up the sort that feel like they're waxing all philosophical about the digital age, moral relativity; poetic and neatly scrawled imagery, sure, but for some reason it felt like a bunch of fancy words strung together which are ultimately as meaningless as taking a hearty poop. But I guess I could say that about almost any death metal band that dares transcend the serial killings, gore menageries and so forth. Job for a Cowboy tried, it's just such a fine line between an actual message of substance and mere pretentious twaddle. I felt like these were keeping one foot on either side of that line. And that's sort of symptomatic of Sun Eater in general: a Herculean attempt to progress and expand one further circumference beyond the burly BroStep brutality of the band's origins than even their last few albums dared. Nothing to scoff at, since tunes like "Buried Monuments" rank among their better compositions, but ultimately I just felt hollow after a few spins, like I was watching some flashy action movie which had a couple impressive stunts but no quotable one-liners like Commando or Terminator. This is more like the last four Jason Statham flicks you caught. Huge, kinetic, smarmy, lots of explosions and special effects, but more of a rental than a purchase.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Fvn Eater - 33%

BastardHead, November 23rd, 2014

I find it so odd that a band that pretty much accidentally helped invent an entire subgenre of metal managed to then follow up that monumentally influential EP (Doom, for the younger than young of you out there) with release after release of blatant trend hopping. I'm gonna come clean here, I can fairly safely say that I actually do like Job for a Cowboy, but I say that with the caveat that it's mostly due to their 2009 effort, Ruination. To me, that's the one time where the trend they landed on managed to be one they were really, really good at. Doom helped deathcore get its start, and it's mostly below average with a couple cool spots here and there, while Genesis saw them plunge headlong into complete, 100% unambiguous death metal, but at the same time saw them completely hollow and bland and not at all worth listening to. Ruination is when they decided to get on the tech death bandwagon, and somehow they surprised the shit out of me by actually doing it quite well. That whole album is full of riff after riff, constantly pummeling you from all directions, coupled with great songwriting and impressive instrumental performances all around. Demonocracy was more of the same, but with weaker songwriting, but overall it's a decent, listenable album.

I ran through that to illustrate why 2014's Sun Eater was met with a collective eyeroll by so many people who are either non-fans or moderate fence sitters like me. Once again, for the fourth time, they've undergone a drastic shift in style, and for the fourth time, it didn't seem natural. There're almost never any flickers of what's to come to be found on any given Job for a Cowboy album, it's always just a really jarring transition to whatever happens to be popular at the time. One time, sure. Two times, okay, coincidence, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But three or four times? Come on man, how often do you expect to fool me?

In the end, that's really not all that important. The end result is all that matters, right? Well sure, but it's undoubtedly frustrating and is always a big black cloud looming over everything they touch. I listen to Sun Eater and I just know in the back of my mind that this was done with scientific precision instead of artistic passion, and that's worrisome. But again, let's try to push that aside, what does the music itself offer us?

*headdesk*

Fucking dammit the style they tried to emulate this time is wanky prog death in the vein of Beyond Creation and The Faceless's newest direction, with touches of Between the Buried and Me for good measure. Job for a Cowboy got the songwriting prowess down pat when they were trying to cram as many notes into any given song as possible, and Sun Eater proves that when they give songs space and try to go for more ethereal, twisted atmosphere, they just fall flat. It's weird, because they're clearly still trying to throw in a bazillion notes, but it comes of as awkward and confused this time around. The rhythm section is basically tweaking on meth, as the drums never slow down, even during the atmospheric parts, and the bass is... *ugh*, the bass is identical to what you'd find on a Beyond Creation album. It's Overkill-level loud, very clear and broowwwdowdwooow. Just like the Quebecois noodlers, the bass is super distracting and instead of complementing the guitars in any way, whether it be through syncopation or counterpoint or whatever, it just feels like it's desperately trying to elbow its way past the rest of the band into the spotlight.

I can give the album some credit for getting better as it goes along, since the first side is utterly forgettable before giving way to some shining moments in the back stretch. "Encircled by Mirrors" and "Buried Monuments" both have some very standout guitar theatrics, to the point where they manage to overshadow the directionless noodling that fills the rest of the runtime. "A Global Shift" definitely deserves a mention as well for being the only song not to fuck around with long instrumental passages where the drummer goes apeshit everywhere except for the snare and cymbals, giving the illusion that the pace is slower and more open. Nah, that song throws all that progressive bullshit to the wind and just shreds the fuck out like Ruination did five years prior. This is what Job for a Cowboy has already proven to be their strength, and they absolutely should just stick to songs like this. Because "A Global Shift"? This song works. Absolutely worth listening to.

But of course, the rest of the album doesn't do that. They're following in the footsteps of The Faceless with this one, as the longer, spacier passages ring several bells that ring strikingly similar to the likes of Opeth, albeit without the clean guitars or vocals. Yeah, Sun Eater keeps it dirty and gritty, never succumbing to the allure of pleasant clean vocals or haunting acoustic passages. Normally I'd praise a band for that, especially this one, since that illustrates that they're not trying to step outside of their bounds and they know exactly what they can and can't do. But hell, I wish they'd just gone for it. I mean why not, right? That's the direction they're leaning, and we all know that by the next album they'll be playing straight up Dark Descent style dissonant gurgly jangledeath so it's not like they're ever going to expand upon this idea. But really, the frustrating part isn't that the band didn't explore the ideas they were flirting with, it's mostly that they bothered with it at all. I can compare this to plenty of bands but all roads lead to Beyond Creation. I feel like The Aura was playing in constant loop in their rehearsal room, because it's such a dead ringer for that album. It's a faceless clone of an album in a style that's been gaining traction, and once again Job for a Cowboy cements themselves firmly in the middle of the pack, not doing anything to stand out.

I've used a lot of words to basically say the same thing over and over (which in a way is kind of indicative of this album in the first place), but it's really the truth. When you think of wanky prog death with Jaco Pastorious's zombie on bass, this is the exact thing you think of. The songwriting never brings the songs over the edge, everything lurks right on the surface but never actually breaks through and makes itself known. It's just anther fish in a school, another faceless nothing that wouldn't stand out at all if it weren't for the name attached to it. For fans of Beyond Creation and The Faceless, this is right up your alley, you'll love it. The rest of us? Not so much. A bunch of samey sounding proggy doodles doesn't make for a good time. You know how whenever you see a band live, there's almost always at least one song that you just tune out for? Somewhere in the middle of apparently every death metal band ever's set, there will be a song that the crowd just kinda checks out for. Maybe the band likes it because it's a break from more demanding stuff, or they had a lot of fun writing/playing it, but it just doesn't connect with anybody in the audience. This album is that song eight times.


Originally written for Lair of the Bastard

Opeth for a Cowboy - 80%

GuardAwakening, November 13th, 2014

On Job for a Cowboy's fourth full-length outing, the band has at last transformed into something remarkably different by death metal standards. We all know and are reminded of the band's earliest EP Doom displaying the band's controversial original deathcore style and shifting to death metal from there on out (and successfully pissing off a lot of neckbeards in the process by making this move) to now reaching a new entity in extreme metal that goes along to be comparable to the likes of prog death's finest such as Opeth or Edge of Sanity, and doing so without reaching a sense of overproducing the entire thing (i.e. Fallujah).

Why are progressive bands so heavily cherished and considered flawless by wide standards? This is a question I've always asked myself. People nerd out over progressive metal and worship it like it's some godlike thing and it seems now that Job for a Cowboy has joined that pack. Is it because of the technical and rather very-focused musicianship that gives people the idea that it's some god-tier product in the form of music? Or is it because progressive metal borrows some of the aesthetic to classical music scales in its writing and thus combining this tapestry with the extremity of heavy music it is pleasing both worlds?

Whatever the case may be, Job for a Cowboy has done it. They successfully have - possibly for the first time ever - pleased Internet metal nerds (IMN's) and even brought in some brand new fans that would rather be jamming Between the Buried and Me again after again.

Now when I'm saying all this, I want you to take it with a grain of salt that this is a progressive death metal album. It's still Job for a Cowboy, so don't expect it to be exactly like Opeth (example: no clean vocals; clean guitar passages or acoustic sections), but the fact is the band is using a lot of the product from prog death metal in this album. Bass guitar is as clear-as-a-crystal audible throughout the entire album, choppy six-string riffs and 8-string solos come in cleaner than they did in any other JFAC album and songs reach up to 6 minutes in length on average. Suffice to say, really taking advantage of JFAC's new lineup as their previous effort with these members (2012's Demonocracy) felt a bit rushed by comparison.

Many of the songs feel like they switch off between the band's new prog style ("Eating the Visions of God" and "Buried Monuments") and the classic sound of JFAC's last three albums that we know them for ("The Stone Cross" and "A Global Shift") and other songs on rarer occasion combine their classic brutal sound with the proggy sound together in one ("The Celestial Antidote"). The band was very obviously trying to create a different album without making an effort to leave their comfort zone and/or abandon or let down their longtime fans in the process of doing this.

That's about it. I don't really have much else to say. It's a solid album and leaves tons of room for the next release by these Arizona death metallers. So until next time, I hope they'll consider leaving their recognized sound a bit more because the release in a whole left me really intrigued in their new interest to the world of progressive death. Welcome to the family, Job for a Cowboy. May your grandfathers Opeth and Edge of Sanity welcome you.

Recommended tracks: "The Stone Cross" and "Buried Monuments"