Job For A Cowboy: Beyond The Chemical Doorway

The state of the world has become so unpredictable in recent years that we have found many bands fall by the wayside, with changes in personal priorities and the decreasing viability of being a functional touring band causing a whole host of obstacles. Speaking of obstacles, JOB FOR A COWBOY have been put through the gauntlet on the way to finally bringing Moon Healer to life. A release that has been in the works for the best part of a decade.

“I’ve got versions of some of these songs which go back about eight years so this stuff has been in a very long filtration process. We’ve been ageing it in oak barrels,” jokes bassist Nick Schendzielos. “Things started to get a bit more serious around 2017 when we realised we had a solid set of tracks with a view to release in 2018, then it went and took another six years! Everybody lives in different places and had their own things going on. Tony [Sannicandro, guitars] is a doctor and was writing his guitar parts whenever he had a spare moment. The pandemic and the lockdowns happened and put a bit of a hampering on things.”

He continues, “the drums were recorded in 2020 but due to the required isolation periods Tony couldn’t find a time to get over to Florida to record the guitars with Jason [Suecof] so he ended up recording them on his own. We didn’t start on recording bass until the middle of 2022 and Johnny [Davy, vocals] didn’t get his vocals recorded until New Years Eve! We then had the matter of mixing and any modifications and then we changed who was mastering the album in the middle of the process. We turned it into Metal Blade and wanted to drop it around the time we played Blue Ridge Festival, around September 2023 and due to the lead time required for vinyl that got pushed back to 2024!”

Moon Healer was always intended to be the natural successor to their critically acclaimed Sun Eater album, a release which saw JOB FOR A COWBOY delve into the realms of technical death metal, setting themselves apart from many of their peers with their crazy, innovative song writing prowess rising to the forefront. This gave the band a very strong plan of attack. 

“I feel like I have a relationship with that record as it was such an important and significant moment for us and if we were going to release a sequel then we had to do it justice, expand on it and make it more expansive and dynamic than before. We knew where we were heading and that we wanted to continue that journey. Johnny came up with this idea of an alchemist that is brewing his own concoction of hallucinogenic drugs and begins to experiment with them to try and find the answers to existence and the root of consciousness,” explains Nick. “I’ve always been heavily interested in this kind of topic and I have a lot of books like DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, Breaking Open The Head by Daniel Pinchbeck as well as the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. It’s all about that kind of insanity/enlightenment you would experience if you chose to travel down those kind of roads. Johnny did a great job of putting all those ideas together and creating a story and a lyrical journey out of it. I feel like he has entered his poet phase where he’s using a lot of different techniques in his enunciation and prose, pronouncing things in a bizarre way that makes you pay attention.”

As per previous releases JOB FOR A COWBOY enlisted the vast skills of Jason Suecof for this release, their existing relationship ensures that he can bring the absolute best out of everyone involved, including newly recruited drummer Navene Koperweis. “Navene‘s drums are crazy. He’s got such a unique and interesting writing style and his hands are just insane. There was one really jazzy section and it took me like four hours to get my head around his fucking timing,” declares Nick. “Getting in the room with Suecof is when the magic really happens. Riffs are all subject to change until you sit down with Jason. He has so many great ideas and would kind of play the role of quality control, making suggestions and improvements along the way. He’s a great guitar player and has a great ear for melodies. I’m not sure if he is a giant theory buff or anything like that but he just conjures up the most weird and cool ideas. Another cool element to the writing process was the fact that we actually had the artwork before we had finished the recording and it was very inspiring. It was almost like the artwork influenced the music. I’ve never experienced that before but it was a cool approach to take.”

Whilst it is a momentous occasion to finally see Moon Healer come to fruition there was still the lingering question of whether JOB FOR A COWBOY would once again vanish into the shadows, thankfully Nick and company are very keen on keeping the momentum flowing. “We’re hoping to do a few festivals as logistically it’s easier for us to commit to than a full scale tour. That means we may probably only have like 45 minutes to play and we’d love to play some Sun Eater material too as we didn’t get many chances to. I don’t think they’ve had their moment.”

“A good chunk of Moon Healer and a couple of deep cuts to thank the old school fans for sticking by us,” he continues. “My favourite piece of music we wrote this time round didn’t actually make it onto the record as we ran out of time so I feel like we’ve definitely still got plenty in the tank and it could be a great starting point for a new record. Tony is already sending over ideas for new tracks too, the guy never stops playing! It would be cool if we could look at bringing material out in a few years time. Now we’ve got the long distance writing thing figured out it shouldn’t be as difficult. There are so many tools available now that make it a lot easier. I’d love to keep doing this as it’s my favourite style of music to play and the perfect place for me to express my musical ideas.”

Moon Healer is out now via Metal Blade Records.

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