Jinjer – Duél
Boom! Ukraine’s own progressive groove/deathcore ambassadors Jinjer literally explode out of the gate and hit the ground racing with the opener to their fifth album Duél. The aptly titled, Tantrum, kicks us straight into high gear and relentlessly does not stop for the next 42 minutes.
Progressive, experimental and above all brutal we race through the opening songs in what seems like a heartbeat and by the time we reach track four Tumbleweed, which just teases the Eastern European sounds of the band’s homeland and is a stand out song for me, we get a very slight change of pace and a song that could be described as a mash up of early No Doubt meets Gojira; a mixture that just should not work but it really does.
The influences on this album are wide and deep: nu-metal, progressive metal, groove metal, alternative rock, death metal, metalcore the list goes on and yet somehow the band have seemed to effortlessly blend this into tangible, complex and well crafted songs. We sweep through Green Serpent with it’s great groove metal breakdown, blaze through the quite frankly brutal assault of Kafka and then get hit again almost immediately by the pummelling deathcore track Fast Draw. The album really is unrelenting and by the time we reach the excellent closing song Duél, which sees chuggy, frantic guitars rolling into straight up groove metal we really do need to take a deep breath and contemplate the assault we’ve just received.
Production overall is excellent and this album sounds huge, but for me the drums could have been louder in the mix. I understand that the emphasis in modern metal is those huge down-tuned auditory assaulting guitars but the drum work of Vlad Ulasevich is exceptional here and yet much of the complexity of his playing is almost lost as it becomes just a part of the texture of the mix overall. The snare tone is also, shall we say, interesting. We’re not talking Metallica’s St. Anger here but the snare is rather lacklustre and could maybe have been more commanding. Musicianship overall though is excellent with progressive, complex twists and turns as vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk seems to move effortlessly between clean and harsh vocals; a real master of her craft. Overall this is a great album; there’s no stand out moment, but the fusing of genres and the pushing of boundaries might well leave you intrigued as to where this band will go next.
That said however, it is not an easy listen. Not only is it a brutal, musical assault on the ears but it’s also intense, brooding, and lyrically in parts it’s dark, raw and unflinching. It’s impossible to discuss Jinjer without discussing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine; in 2022 the band themselves were actually given permission by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to tour the world as official ambassadors for the nation. The lyrics here are thought provoking and cleverly blend symbolism and metaphor. They force the listener to ask the question: are we discussing the war or are we discussing inner struggles and internal conflicts? Maybe it’s both. With everything that’s happening in the world today, if 2025 needed a soundtrack, maybe this is it.
Rating: 7/10 – Very Good
Wayne McAloon | Now Spinning Magazine
