If every time someone said a band tore up the rule book, we’d probably be facing a global shortage of reference guides to metal. But how often do we see a band writing their own story in the world of heavy music, with each song a narrative wrought in harsh distortion and intriguing twists like thorny vines growing over an ancient gate? Jinjer might have come a long way in the last decade, drawing power from tours with Arch Enemy and Lamb Of God, but they’ve never left the cold Ukrainian winter behind them, judging by the magnificent bleakness of fifth album ‘Duél’.
While the landscapes they create are gorgeous, Escher-like fantasies, it’s impossible to ignore the real world as it leaks into their current sound. Since their last release, 2019’s ‘Wallflowers’, Jinjer have naturally been influential in raising funds and assisting in relief efforts in their wartorn homeland, and while we know that vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk is still more than capable of the kind of fae vocals we love her for (see her collab with Spiritbox this year), there’s a grim determination to survive waiting around every corner of ‘Duél’.
Title track and closing salvo ‘Duél’ served as the perfect announcement to the ferocious intention behind this record. “Barrel to barrel, pick a side,” roars Shmayluk, a very thin metaphor barely veiling the political intention behind her words, “There’s no way to hide, the wounds run deep and wide.” It’s an ambitious, theatrical track, reaching deep into the depths of unrelenting rhythm and emerging with an assertive resolution. On the literal and figurative flip side of the record, we have opener ‘Tantrum’, with its cursed visions of ballrooms and chandeliers, a elegantly crashing ruin that proves Jinjer are a force to be reckoned with. There’s frequently a playfulness in their songs, but in the same way a cat will ‘play’ with a dead mouse, and the unreal elements in their lyrics are invested with a sense of purpose emerging from the fog. More than enough of their prog influence remains in the mix to satisfy fans of the complex and mysterious though, only adding to the originality of the statement they’re making.
There’s very few moments of prettiness or respite on ‘Duél’, which is perhaps the point. War is hell, and so their sonic re-creation of it should also offer few moments of release. When there is a glimpse of loveliness, your ears grasp at it and rejoice. The prog guitar twirls on ‘Rogue’, the intro to ‘Tumbleweed’ that rolls as lightly as its namesake into an elegant lament. “Have you heard of the storm that uprooted my home?” Shmayluk screams, embracing the lyrical ambiguity that haunts every dark corner of the album. The choral strains that open ‘Green Serpent’ are deceptively light, and soon we’re dragged down into the distorted and deliberately disjointed world that Jinjer have made their own. ‘Kafka’, their tribute to novelist Franz, drips with literary references as a wonderfully unpredictable track that leaps between micro-scenes, each with it’s own flavour that somehow captures the black surrealism of it’s inspiration.
With plans for 2025 that include shows across four continents (the phrase ‘world tour’ being taken very literally), it’s fair to say that Jinjer can only achieve a stronger presence as they spread their violently original take on “groove metal” around the globe.
If fans are expecting more of the ‘Pisces’ sound though, they’d better brace themselves; Jinjer are louder, smarter and angrier now, their rage funnelled into ferocious, complex storytelling via the kind of heaviness that can’t really be imitated. ‘Duél’ has the power locked within it to change the way you see the world, or at the very least to initiate you in Jinjer’s version of reality, and now is the right time to unleash it.
KATE ALLVEY