‘ANOTHER LEVEL’
Ukrainian metalcore band Jinjer headlines, gears to release album
BY ROZANNA M. MARTINEZ OF THE JOURNAL
Traveling across the world to bring its headlining tour to North America has been an eye-opening experience for the Ukrainian metalcore band Jinjer.
The band’s popularity continues to grow, and many dates on the tour have sold out.
“Oh, my god — this is, like, our first headlining show, so we are quite honored and surprised that there’s a huge demand for tickets,” singer Tatiana Shmayluk said.
Jinjer is promoting its new album, “Macro,” on its current tour, which stops at Sunshine Theater on Tuesday, Sept. 17. “Macro” is due for release on Oct. 25.
“That album is another level, I think, for us,” Shmayluk said.
“I think it has a lot of ’90s- and 2000s-inspired flavor. It has, like, this spirit of late ’90s. And, I don’t know, I feel it will be a great success.”
The vibe on the new album was not planned.
“We didn’t have any idea it would turn out this way, because after we recorded all the songs we realized that some of them really sound like 2000s like early 2000s,” Shmayluk said. “And, I don’t know, maybe it was selfconscious — who knows? — just because we grew up on the bands from the ’90s and 2000s. I think like this type of music still has its right to exist, so we kind of give it a second chance just to remind (people) that there was a certain period of time that music was popular.”
The song “Judgement (& Punishment)” has a reggae twist with a metal edge.
“The thing is that before Jinjer, I was singing in a reggae, ska, punk and funk band, and I always was a huge fan of reggae, and I really miss those times when I could sing some reggae,” Shmayluk said. “For me, this is a very special song, because I could insert my favorite genre into metal, another favorite genre of music. This song was (written) mostly by Roman Ibramkhalilov, our guitar player, and I think he maybe wanted to satisfy my needs, you know, in music, and he said, like, he also didn’t plan to make reggae. It just came out like this, and that’s cool.”
“Macro” was written in a time crunch. Bassist Eugene Abdukhanov announced he had finished writing the music just prior to recording. That gave Shmayluk a short time to write the lyrics. Shmayluk was down to the wire when she wrote the lyrics for the song “Pausing Death.” She wrote the lyrics the day before recording it.
“It is what it is,” Shmayluk said. “This is how we work, and I think we will continue working like this. I think stress really helps to make it special, because I come to the recording studio and I don’t have any plans. I usually improvise right in the studio.”