Job For A Cowboy Ruination
By
Peter Atkinson,
Contributor
Monday, July 13, 2009 @ 4:01 PM
(Metal Blade)
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Arizona's Job For A Cowboy took a lot of people by surprise with their barnstorming 2007 debut album, Genesis. But after earning raves, scoring the best charting debut (at #54) by a metal band since Slipknot in 1999 and spending 18 months on the road bringing their surging death metal to the masses, expectations are understandably a bit higher for the follow up. And Ruination more than delivers.
If anything, Ruination is tighter, more direct and, therefore, more brutally efficient than Genesis - this despite changing three band members, including both guitarists, since the debut was recorded. Indeed iron-lunged frontman Jonny Davy is the only member left from the original 2003 lineup. But JFAC certainly have not lost a step, and are all business here. Nearly all of Ruination's 10-tracks leap out of the gate at full-throttle and rarely let up - the shuddering title track and grim, relatively epic "March to Global Enslavement" excepting.
Powered by Jon Rice's stampeding drumming and Davy's manic, free-association ranting, Ruination has little room for the breakdowns, mellow/clean sections, forced melodies and instrumental jackoffery that have become so commonplace - and tired - in contemporary metal. That's not to say Ruination is bereft of dynamics or dexterity - give a listen to the astonishingly complex riffing and rhythms of "Regurgitated Disinformation" or the headlong "Summon The Hounds." The band just seem to like to keep things super tight, lean and mean.
You've actually got to listen hard for solos by the newish guitar tandem of Al Glassman (ex-Despised Icon) and Bobby Thompson - one on "Enslavement" is like 15 seconds long and a trade-off on "Unfurling the Darkened Gospel" isn't much longer. But as fast as they play through the bulk of Ruination, and as quickly tempos keep shifting gear - on, for example, the whipsawing "Lords of Chaos" - they've got their hands full enough as it. Showing off just isn't an option.
If there's real "star" here it's Davy, whose feral vocals alternate from guttural death metal growl to piercing, Randy Blythe-like shriek during his diatribes about nuclear war, propaganda, genocide, torture, oppression and all manner of man's inhumanity to man. His vocal patterns tend to follow a course all their own, sometimes with seemingly little regard for a song's structure, but he manages to weave them into or on top of the music with enough savvy so that it doesn't just sound like a pile of noisy crap.
To that end, JFAC have smartly left much of their earlier death-core tendencies behind them - "To Detonate and Exterminate," however, does conclude with some lurching breakdowns - and continue to hone their death/thrash metal hybrid into something that is both lethal and listenable. Ruination is a vicious, snarling beast of an album from a band that, given their lineup circumstances, could have very easily sophomore slumped. Instead, they have triumphed.
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Blackhaart - 8/11/2009 9:52:07 PM "Job for a Cowboy?" Butt-fucking a trucker!
The_Space_Lord - 8/5/2009 7:52:02 PM FMJ's recent interview with Job For A Cowboy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9y4jvYLhIM
nkmnrcn - 7/26/2009 7:10:47 PM I'm just glad we are getting another band (decent band) from Arizona. Last one worth listening to from AZ was Flotsam.
analgravy2 - 7/25/2009 1:15:55 AM How the fuck did this shit band get a review of an album but not Trivium's Shogun? Not that it was a great album, but still. How the fuck does this site make any money?
analgravy2 - 7/25/2009 1:13:43 AM BlowJob for a Cowboy: Sheep.
Brjoro - 7/24/2009 12:36:55 PM 'Metal for kids'? And then dude asks if anyone is going to see Static X? Ha ha! At least JFOC is actually 'metal' even if they are overrated. Static X? Come on. Not even worth discussing this crap band...
Gravy_ - 7/22/2009 11:49:01 AM Great kick your teeth in material. I love it!!
CIVILPSYCHO - 7/21/2009 5:15:38 AM Like it or not ya'll have to agree this is some brutal shit, I could only get into about 4 songs
Hellhammer69 - 7/20/2009 3:28:20 PM Their name was enough to turn me off....sound like they are metal for kids.....Anyone going to Static X in August at HOB Anaheim?....
fizzgig - 7/20/2009 11:46:42 AM Their first album was awful, to go right along with the lame name. And Funk/Blobber, your final question, capitalizing the T IS correct.
3cardpkr - 7/14/2009 11:51:43 AM (BLOW) JOB FOR A COWBOY.....
funk101 - 7/14/2009 6:15:21 AM I pose three questions, fellow ranters. First, just why (if this "band" is so great) would there only be one original member left after such a relatively short but successful run? Secondly, why another cancer/Cookie Monster singer? What does this obvious lack of singing ability add to anything? Finally, is "Summon The Hounds" a bestiality song (and why is the "T" capiltalized in "The"..that's not correct)?
deadguy - 7/13/2009 10:07:26 PM Good band, better than 90% of the shit that is coming out lately from newer bands...
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