Angry Metal Guy
Despite the coverage in these halls referencing 2016’s King of Everything as “…so inessential, so boring, and so forgettable…,” Jinjer has persisted through almost ten years, from then, of rising notoriety. With hundreds of thousands of listeners on streaming services, and a touring schedule loaded with international dates and festival appearances, it’s safe to say that the Ukrainian nu-prog-groove outfit has earned some sort of place at the metal table. Of course, their alternative rock bend and penchant for half-time at a stuttering, deathcore crawl ensure that that place is not at the table of any traditional heavy metal sound. A seat hardly matters, though, when the crowd stands ready to jumpdafuckup with a drop and down-tuned chug. Can Jinjer’s fifth full-length Duél even hope to conquer the naysayers?
Yo, yo, yo, that’s a no, no, no—Jinjer hangs around, groove to the bone, unapologetic in dedication to their drop A riffcraft and tough guy build-ups. At the center of Duél—in case you’re not one of the ninety-million views of Jinjer’s breakout “Pisces” live performance—sits vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk’s one-woman alt croon to howling demon performance, both full in nasally rock control and bellowing in shredded throat prowess. Whether slathered with a Staley-tinged (Alice in Chains), Kittie-indebted sneer (“Tumbleweed,” “Someone’s Daughter”) or cranked with a scraggly, Otep-ian fervor (“Green Serpent,” “Dark Bile”), Shmayluk dominates the draw of memorability that Jinjer, and Duél, have to offer.
The reliance on Shmayluk’s charisma, however, has never felt quite as strong on other Jinjer outings as it does on Duél. While sliding scale riffs and heavy kit syncopation, particularly in well-placed chiming cymbal chatter, skew progressive in a brooding, fugal fashion (just about every melodic layer feels Baroque in inspiration), it’s the well-worn path of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus that spells the battlefield on which Duél places its every piece. On older releases, Shmayluk and Jinjer have been a little more experimental in approach, both letting their native tongue provide an additional melancholy and allowing left-field influences (like reggae). But in an unwavering contrapuntal aggro-shuffle, Eugene Abdukhanov ensures that his bass prancing core propels each track forward. This Meshuggah-cadence, Tool-tricky possession shows in beautiful tapping runs scattered across slow-burn bridges and fading light outros. And while his fancy finger talents inspire routine closed-eye head bobs, they also too fall into service of a framing djentrified guitar drag or deathcore-leaning breakdown.
In an album as uniform as Duél, the details in production and pacing make or break the effectiveness of the hypnotic groove for which it aims. On the one hand, drummer Vladislav Ulasevich’s rhythmic choices—his dry and dampened snare, quick clanging cymbal accents—all live in service to frame Jinjer’s low-end stomp and swagger. However, in that same low-impact, woody plonk, no other sounds exist to compliment its unsatisfying tat-tat-tat, with only certain tracks that live in relentlessly driving mosh grooves or thrash-speed breaks (“Rogue,” “Fast Draw,” “Duél”) finding sufficient speed and brightness to feel like a fulfilling sonic mold. All too often, Jinjer leans on a droning, mid-paced lurch that has to work overtime to overcome auditory inertia. And though Shmayluk spends a higher percentage of Duél in a cleaner mode than past works, which is a mode that suits her and Jinjer well, the incessant urge for every song to force a hammy aggression—a classic death metal “BLEGH” even finding its way into “Hedonist”—into every other verse or bridge to comply to the Jinjer formula wears on the lesser tracks that slog about.
Familiarity can be frustrating. And for a band like Jinjer, the frequent trips down big riff lanes that sound a lot like their other work widens the gap between rippers and skippers. Duél sounds like Jinjer, which is an accomplishment in a genre amalgamation that boasts many more ill-advised backward hats than it does influential, legacy acts. However, good bands don’t necessarily always need to make good albums. Jinjer is a good band, and their own dramatic and skillful identity shines through in full force on a number of tracks that Duél hosts. But with eleven tracks that run in a narrow pool of lengths, a curated scope of execution, and at varying levels of quality within each iteration, it’s hard to call Duél a good album.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Napalm Records | Bandcamp
Websites: jinjer-metal.com | jinjer-jinjer.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: February 7th, 2025
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Fri Feb 07 12:27:38 GMT 2025