JOB FOR A COWBOY Guitarist Talks 'Ruination'

The I Heart Guitar blog recently conducted an interview with guitarist Bobby Thompson of Arizona extreme metallers JOB FOR A COWBOY. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On the band's new album, "Ruination":

"The concept lyrically kinda branches off from the concept of our last record, 'Genesis', it just goes down more of a political route. It talks about a lot more modern day issues and problems with the world kind of brushing over world governments, police states, just a lot of things that are happening right now in the world. Jonny, our singer, has been reading a lot, researching different things that are going on to sing about, write about. This album definitely went down the political route. Musically, there wasn't really an overall concept. Our goal was to write the music we wanted to write and maybe not be too concerned with what people expected of us, or trying to fit in with a certain thing. We just wanted to write the music we were into, and if we liked it we kept it. If we didn't, we scrapped it. The interaction between the music and lyrics is, the music is very dark and the lyrics are very dark, but as far as that goes, Jonny does all the lyric writing, all the vocal content. That's his domain and we let him do his thing. I think he just writes and puts it to the songs whenever we get done."

On working with producer Jason Suecof at AudioHammer in Orlando, Florida:

"He's an extremely creative producer and he helped us a lot with developing some different ideas we had that were underdeveloped when we went into the studio. And he's an incredible guitar player. It's always cool to have a producer who's an incredible musician who's going to say, 'Hey, try this harmony, try picking it like this instead.' So it was definitely really helpful and a cool experience. He's a really fun dude to play with, a great guitar player with a lot of great ideas. He can play pretty much any style, so that's really cool."

On having two technically proficient and stylistically established guitarists in the band:

"Whoever could play whatever riff better would record it. If I was better at one rhythm, I would do it, and if Al was better, he'd do it. We pretty much went riff by riff. The main difference between our styles is I was raised playing a more legato style. A lot of stuff I write is more left-hand oriented while a lot of stuff Al writes is more right-hand-oriented. We kinda had an interesting period of trying to get used to each other's style. We also pick things very differently too, which in the beginning was kind of a challenge, but now we're starting to fit into the groove. He has more of a grindy, faster background than I do, so it's an interesting combination: A fast, in-your-face background and a more melodic but really heavy, sludgy background."

Read the entire interview at I Heart Guitar.