Job For A Cowboy Peer “Beyond the Chemical Doorway” in New Single and Video
With their newest album Moon Healer on the horizon, experimental death metal outfit Job For A Cowboy have a lot riding on 2024. We’ve already heard a couple singles from the new offering, but today’s release of “Beyond the Chemical Doorway” is yet another example of why you just can’t fuck with these guys and their ability to throw down.
As previously reported, Moon Healer is the band’s first new album in a decade, so to say anticipation for its release has been high would be an understatement. Frontman Jonny Davy said the new record’s the culmination of each member’s musical growth over the years.
“The evolution of our sound has become a big part of the band. As we mature as musicians, our tastes and interests naturally expand. With age comes more experience and ideas that we wouldn’t have considered in our earlier years.“
Listening to the single itself, it’s a brooding, almost foreboding piece of death metal that’s got an almost ethereal feeling to it. That’s not to say it doesn’t kick all kinds of ass, mind you — it’s just got layers to it. Like a really punishing onion, or something.
Davy said the main focus of the song thematically is the idea of Gnosticism, which is an occult teaching that deals with “a state of transcendence achieved through intuitive, unconventional means — by way of Hieronymus Bosch’s art.” Davy said that unrelenting pursuit of higher knowledge is a main theme throughout Moon Healer.
“On Moon Healer, we unravel the dismal narrative of a close friend consumed by an unwavering pursuit of enlightenment. They achieve this through a compulsive embrace of hallucinogenic drugs. This storyline emerges from the foundation set in our earlier album, Sun Eater, delving deeper into the intricacies brewing within our friend’s psyche.
“When under the influence of these drugs, this individual claimed to encounter entities and find themselves in indescribable worlds that defy rational comprehension. Many who undergo such experiences draw intriguing parallels between diverse facets of Gnostic philosophy, biblical depictions of angels, and the stages of Bardo Thodol delineated in the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. In the album’s opener, ‘Beyond The Chemical Doorway,’ our friend vividly voices his hallucinations, recounting the experience of breaching forbidden, gnostic-like realms, with each account culminating in the utter unraveling of his being.”
Moon Healer will be available on February 23 via Metal Blade Records, though you can preorder your copy today.
