Job For A Cowboy at Orpheum Stage Door
Arizona extreme metal outfit Job For A Cowboy has found an awful lot of success thanks to the infectious yet highly clichéd hybrid of death metal and metalcore found on its 2006 self-released Doom EP, which went massively viral before the band struck a deal with Metal Blade. But with two far superior follow-up albums and a killer new guitarist in the form of Goratory’s Al Glassman on board, it seems that vocalist Jonny Davy really wants fans to let go of the band’s past. “You’re a fucking faggot, were not playing that song right now,” Davy said to a fan that kept yelling for “Entombment Of A Machine”—one of the band’s older tunes—at the Orpheum Stage Door on Monday. “I’m just kidding around, we’ll play it later,” he added with a smile.
As JFAC ripped into “Unfurling A Darkened Gospel” from 2009’s Ruination, the jackhammer double bass of drummer Jon Rice locked into the dizzying riffs of guitarists Glassman and Bobby Thompson. Davy’s monstrous growl sunk into demonic gutturals or cackling screeches that cut through the sonic minefield of blast-beats and guitar shrapnel that flew from the house speakers.
There is no greater testament to how much JFAC has grown as a band than hearing an older, metalcore-by-numbers tune like “Knee Deep” in the same company with newer gems like the mighty “Regurgitated Disinformation” (Davy’s attack on the American news media) or the slow seige of “Ruination.” Glassman’s busy fretting hand even hammered out some tasteful guitar solos in “Reduced To Mere Filth” and “Embedded,” which closed the band’s mighty performance.
San Diego’s Cattle Decapitation put on a punishing opening set of its own. The environmentalist grindcore veterans ripped through a handful of tunes from 2009’s The Harvest Floor that seemed to take a few nods from atmospheric black metal and power electronics. This is partially due to the table of gadgetry that vocalist Travis Ryan would fiddle with to create massive soundscapes and manipulate his otherworldly howls and growls. Ryan’s range of screams was all over map, and he would often drool on himself while sticking his tongue out to hit those hard to reach gurgles for animal rights. Of course, the band’s noisy experimentation and melodic exploration hasn’t taken away from its breakneck time changes or blindingly quick sweep riffing, it has merely refined them.
