Interview by Kris Peters
In the modern age of music, it is important - almost vital - to maintain a steady output of music and engagement with your fans. People's increasingly shorter attention spans, coupled with the sheer volume of new bands and music being released daily, combine to ensure bands that aren't active, don't survive.
Pure and simple.
But try telling that to experimental death metal outfit Job For A Cowboy, who have let a staggering ten years elapse between records. The band have taken their time in following up the critically acclaimed 2014 release Sun Eater, preferring to patiently harness their creative impulses and allow them to ferment until the band was happy.
The result is Moon Healer, set for release on February 23, an album that maintains the rage and aggression associated with Job For A Cowboy's music, but also expands on their conventional sound. It is an album that has already garnered immense interest and positive reaction from critics who have heard it, and marks but one more step on Job For A Cowboy's path to musical enlightenment.
Vocalist Jonny Davy sat down for a chat with HEAVY to tell us more.
"This band has been around, shockingly - although it doesn't feel like it - for a good 20 years," he began. "After about a ten-year hiatus, we're about to come out with our new album called Moon Healer. I am pumped."
We ask what the period is like after finishing an album and having to sit by and wait for it to be unleashed on the public.
"At this point, it's in the past," he replied. "We've taken a break from it, and in hindsight we're looking back already and seeing what we would have done differently, or talking about what we want to do for the next record. It's been a long, long, arduous process, but we're finally here."
We ask Davy about the musical side of Moon Healer and what the band was going for sonically.
"The band has evolved quite a bit since its origins," he measured. "We kinda started off pretty much as a cookie cutter deathcore band, and then we progressed into more modern death metal and after the release of Genesis we started sprinkling in the genres like technical death metal and now even some progressive elements. I think a lot of people recognise the band is kind of a cauldron of an evolution of sound, and that's our motto right now. We like to challenge, and we're the type of band who don't wanna put out the same record twice."
In the full interview, Jonny talks more about Moon Healer, the singles released and how they represent the album, the opening track The Chemical Doorway and its Middle Eastern flavour, the temptation of repeating the formula that made Sun Eater successful, what has changed with Job For A Cowboy since that album, the conceptual elements of Moon Healer, the cover art and how it ties in with the concept, how Job For A Cowboy have changed musically over each album, future plans and more.