Job For A Cowboy - Demonocracy

2012 is already shaping up to be a great year for heavy music. The new Cannibal Corpse and Meshuggah records are the frontrunners for my favorite records of the year and we’re not even out of the first quarter yet. Arizona’s Job For A Cowboy keeps the momentum going with their latest outing Demonocracy. I’ll be the first too admit it; I really like Job For A Cowboy. Sure their name stinks but there are worse out there and unfortunately for them they have the Doom EP in their catalog. If you can get passed those two nuisances, you have a very solid death metal outing presented to you and this album is easily their crowning achievement so far.

Unfortunately for most people, JFAC will always be remembered for their Doom EP, more specifically the song “Knee Deep” which was synchronized with an episode of Spongebob Squarepants for a popular YouTube video. It was that song and album that earned the band to be written off by the vast majority of the deathmetal community. It didn’t help their case that a million clones popped up on MySpace in the following weeks either. Nevertheless, what a lot of the death metal elites fail to put into perspective is that the Doom EP was released 6 and half years ago and the band has progressed into one of the more interesting technical death metal outings today. They’ve even deviated greatly from the Genesis record which was a huge change in direction that the band looked to be headed.

With each passing album, JFAC has found a way to keep their concept moving forward. Ruination showed the band find their sound. Genesis was boring but like I just stated moved them away from the deathcore route into something more metal. It just ended up becoming a stale album rather fast. The Gloom EP took musical foundation that Ruination laid down but added a new level of technical prowess on top. Vocalist, and now only original member, Jonny Davy went back to his duel vocal styles. The addition of the high pitch vocals he used only on the Doom EP gave the listener something else to pay attention to. Now with Demonocracy, it looks like it has all finally come together. The album is easily the most technical they’ve ever done. They are able to go from spastic note playing into a more chugging along trash/death riff and back again with ease. Each song is aggressive and powerful. It was like they took all their previous material and dropped them into a blender with some steroids.

I don’t know how much weight their stigma still holds but I would suggest everyone remove their elitist crown for 40 minutes and give atleast this record a chance. This is a solid slab of some really heavy technical death metal. Job For A Cowboy has separated themselves from former peers such as All Shall Perish and WhiteChapel, and has now firmly fitted themselves with the likes of Suffocation and Dying Fetus.

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