Job For A Cowboy – Doom

Job For A Cowboy – Doom / 2006 King of the Monsters / 6 Tracks / http://www.jfacmetal.com / http://www.kotmrecords.com / Reviewed 10 February 2006

There is no claiming that Job For A Cowboy is not the hardest, most brutal band currently out in the grindcore scene. Imagine the loudest, noisiest child throwing a temper tantrum and add about twenty years to eir age and one has a great idea of who Job For A Cowboy is. Unlike those children, however, Job For A Cowboy can put their random bursts of music together into something that will affect individuals emotionally as well as give them a pounding headache by the end of it all.

Screamed out vocals struggle with much gruffer ones; power metal riffs tangle with brutal, almost sludgy lines, and the drums putt around in the background. The music that Job For A Cowboy come up with is not fleeting; aside from the longer runtimes of these tracks (a song like “Entombment of a Machine” is four minutes long), the band sticks with a listener for much longer than their contemporaries. The multiple layers of music that confront a listener is another large selling point for the band; while there is ultimately only one way to go at the end of it all, Job For A Cowboy create enough in the way of aural distractions to ensure that this is not a disc that will be gathering dust on someone’s bookshelf. And let us not forget about the linear sound that the band achieves at times on “Doom”; on this everything is compressed down into a beam of musical light that is so bright that looking (or listening) to it for more than the band recommends will leave someone a unfeeling, unthinking vegetable.

On a track like “Relinquished”, the fact that the band holds back a little bit before going into their breakdown only makes what is on the second half of the track that much more intense. The band has only been together for about a year and yet they come out with one of the most impressive grind/thrash albums of the last few years. There is no pretense or bullshit amongst the band, just the keenest edge of musical ability pounding listeners’ heads into a table for about twenty or thirty minutes. Keep an eye on this band, as their tightness may be enough to weed out all the scenesters with button-up shirts and gauged ears out of the clubs for a few years creating a retort to “Doom”.

Top Track: Relinquished

Rating: 8.1/10

[JMcQ]