Can we talk a little bit about the comeback of Job for a Cowboy, what were you all doing in that time. Reading into it, the comeback was plotted for 2019-2020 but you were discussing new music to go alongside Sun Healer as far back as 2017.
NS: Even 2016 I've got some tracks for! In April 2016, we played the Modified Ghost Fest in Vancouver, the one-show world tour for Sun Eater. I remember coming home, driving and listening to 3 or 4 of the new tracks. So a few of the songs are nearly 10 years old. As more songs trickled in through 2017, by 2018 we had at least a version of all of the tracks, so we decided to get serious. We did the whole thing, "does this make sense?" "does this part need to be faster?" We had kind of planned to get into the studio by the end of 2018 but it just didn't happen. Things took so long because we're so far apart, we're not able to jam in a room. Everybody (besides me) has a serious job. Tony just graduated from med school and is a doctor in Ireland now. Johnny is a serious coder for a giant IT company and has a family. The timing was more difficult than when we were younger when we were able to say "hey, let's go live in a house together and write a record". I think we were able to get something pretty unique and authentic out of that, especially since we were recording so slow and we had so much time to reflect and refine the hell out of it. Navene [Koperweis] recorded drums in 2020, and then I expected Tony to fly down and record guitar and then I would record bass, but we weren't able to make it work with scheduling; he had to record everything himself in Ireland, on his weekends. I finally recorded bass in July 2022 so we had all the essential guitars, bass, drums done. Johnny wasn't able to make it down here until 6 months later, so he smashed most of the record vocals on New Year's Eve going into New Year's Day. His recording process was spanned over 2 years but in 1 night *laughs*. Then mixing and mastering takes a while as you could imagine, we even changed mastering engineers part way through to a guy I was working on something else with. All this painstaking stuff and the result is this that's coming out in less than 20 days, which is unreal.
Who was the producer on the new record?
NS: That was Jason Suecof, who we had on the last record. As we wanted to keep this a sister/companion record, we didn't want to stray too far away from the formula of the last record too much, so we kept the same base and tried to keep as much of the process of making Sun Eater as we could.
Who did the artwork for the singles and album cover?
NS: I don't know exactly who did the single art at the moment, but Tony Koehl did the artwork. You can find his instagram at @tonykoehl. He also did the album cover for the previous record, so again it's about keeping that process. If you look at his pages, he does all this sweet leather work and all of that.
I absolutely love the style of art on some of the earlier Job For a Cowboy records. It reminds me of some of the Whitechapel/later Despised Icon album covers but more 3D. Would you by chance know the name of the artist(s)?
NS: Yeah, so I don't recall who did the Doom EP, it might've been Johnny? I believe Genesis and Ruiniation and Demonocracy were all Brent Elliott-White. He was an artist for the cards for Magic the Gathering. That's kind of why it has that game character vibe. He's done stuff for Megadeth, Trivium, Coheed and Cambria and the list goes on.
Can you talk about getting Navene on drums for the record?
NS: Navene is a monster on the drums. If you've ever seen him play, it's like destruction. It's like those drums did something real bad to him in the past and he's making them pay, you know? I've always loved watching him play though. I first met him when he was playing with Animals as Leaders on the 2010 Summer Slaughter Tour, I was out with my band Cephalic Carnage and we'd watch those kids play every single day and Navene was so much fun to watch, my favorite drummer to watch on that tour. So later on, him and Johnny toured, the Animosity and JFAC tour in 2008, and they did a lot of stuff together after that, so they ended up forging a friendship. So much so that they ended up forming Fleshrot. Johnny and Navene meshed together really well on that record they put out. Flash forward to this new record, we were trying to lock down a drummer and Johnny said "it would be sick if Navene could play for us". He went down to record drums with Jason Suecof in 2020. We've been trying to get him to play with us live but Entheos is his baby and I don't want to step on that. It would be really cool to do a Entheos/Job for a Cowboy show or tour and get some double duty drumming going on.
How'd you guys find Mike Caputo? (live drummer)
NS: So, Mike did the one show for us, the Blue Ridge Rock Fest. It was a really fun show, we didn't have food besides some snacks but we did get booze! Mike came in, very professional and crushed it. He's a machine and has crazy feet. We were in a pinch for that, we were trying to get Charn (Jon Rice) to play with us, he came and hung with us where we were staying for Blue Ridge, just because we were Virginia, and it was great. Mike was super pro, came in and did all of our click tracks, we put the sample board together, and handled all of that. The dude is a wiz with that and a sick drummer.
Is there anything else studio or live related that you would like to mention that I missed?
NS: I think we did pretty good! We're just going to be putting this thing out, and we'll be working on some videos. I did the first two with my buddy Kyle Lamar from Digital Mile. Kyle is one of the best guys on the planet, incredible cinematographer, incredible videographer and great editor, he just kind of does it all. He's also super open with sharing all his knowledge with whoever which is super awesome. When the label told us we could do the videos with Kyle years back, Johnny and I ended up just brainstorming mad, to really bring to life what the character was going through, or create some sort of vision or aesthetic. We would then bring it to Kyle, and he told us how we would shoot this. So then I'd have to go buy props, set design, hire actors and things like that. In the end, all 3 of us had so much fun with it. Our newest video for 'Beyond the Chemical Doorway' was done by Chris Clumpp, who has a company called The Vagrant Key. We had a girl named Kelly Harris come out and help with special effects, and she had actually worked with Mastodon! Since it's really hard for us to tour because of everyone having jobs, these videos are just another way to keep telling the story, if you will!
Can we talk about the lyrics on the album?
NS: Yes! Johnny and I worked very close, and Johnny is such a prolific writer, his lyricism has grown so much since the early days. I mean the Doom EP lyrics are cool, but he's really just refined his process and the lyrics have matured a lot. As far as concepts go, everything on the album is loosely based around a character going through an existential crisis, basically navigating his way through life with hallucinogens and diving deep into that whole rabbit hole. It's like a death metal album born from the mystical confines of an alchemists' laboratory.
As a musician who plays a lot of festivals as well as regular shows, how do you compare the two, do you like one over the other?
NS: Festival life is fun, man! I mean, I love headliners, I love support or co-headliner on 1000-cap venue, 500 cap venues even. Festivals are just really fun because it's a huge conglomerate of people. It's an opportunity to play to tons of people who may or may not know your music. The same deal may go for a co-headliner or support slot, but when the range of bands is about 50, the range of fans is BIG! You could be playing to 5000 people and how many of those people have heard of your band before? You get the opportunity to convert a lot of people into fans, and at the same time you get to make a lot of new friends. We're looking forward to doing some of the DWP festivals (these include Aftershock, Rock on the Range and countless others). Other than that, Europe! They kind of set the bar for how heavy festivals should be, with Wacken, Summer Breeze, Brutal Assault. The USA is answering back really well now though!
Thank you Nick for taking time and doing this interview. The new album 'Moon Healer' is out on Friday, February 23rd, 2024 on Metal Blade Records!
Links below to streaming and social media.
Job For A Cowboy - Metal Blade Storefront
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