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The meteoric trajectory of JINJER seemingly has no end in sight. With constant touring, it’s amazing they’ve managed to put out record after record with barely two or three years between releases. With their creative cup constantly flowing, we caught up with drummer Vlad Ulasevish on their latest record Duél.
While the previous record Wallflowers was incredibly well received, JINJER haven’t rested on their laurels and just copy-pasted a similar approach. In fact, they’ve pretty much done the complete opposite. “So for me, [between] these two albums Wallflowers and Duél we have a big difference, but it’s still JINJER, of course,” Vlad explains. “Roman sounds heavier, I think – but sometimes it’s also more melancholic. So, I think it more have more contrast between hard parts and clean vocals and melancholic parts. I really like this; the difference like between them.”
The record has some real stompers, as is JINJER’s way. When speaking about his own contribution in the context of how the band dynamics, Vlad comments, “You know when the drum is like the loudest instrument in the band? [We didn’t want that]. Yeah, and in this album, in this record, we made first bass and guitar sounds – we made it really aggressive and heavy. And after we just fit the drums inside this huge and massive sound of guitar and bass. With this record, my drums are more simple, I think. With all my parts, I just [play off the] guitar riffs or bass lines and I just follow the follow the melodic or riffs of guitars.
“[Interestingly] in the previous album, we recorded drums first actually, when we try to make like in I spoke, I speak about Wallflowers. So that time when we try to make bass or guitars more aggressive, our sound engineer told us that the drums is a raw because we wanted to made it raw. So the drums this raw. [This time around, the first focus was to make] aggressive sounding guitar or bass, so we will not hear drums at all. So, we’re like, ‘okay, let’s see how it can work’. And in this album, me, Roman and Eugene, we want to achieve that really aggressive guitar sound. So, we spoke with our sound engineer saying, ‘let’s make the guitar sound first, so drums is not as important’. It was first time we worked like this and I really satisfied the result, and hopefully everybody will be too.”
There’s a huge plethora of ideas and styles from hardcore to some doomier moments. It’s a record that feels very carefully crafted, while also not feeling constricted. And while there is a method to every JINJER record, even vocalist Tatiana changed part of her approach, at least to recording.
“To be honest, I think Tatiana starts doing lyrics and vocal lines when all songs are done,” he laughs about the process from instrumentation to lyrics. “Tati starts work when everything is done and the time deadlines start. I don’t know why, but Tati likes to work like this and every time it works. But actually, this record is first time we made vocal demos! When we did Wallflowers or macro and micro, the first studio record was the final studio record [for Tati]. We didn’t have the vocal demos, so sometimes the improvisation was the final version of the song. And this time, Tati flew to us and Warsaw, and we spent, I think, two weeks for recording vocal demos. And after we had time to change some things, and now in this album, I think the vocal parts are super cool. Every note we discussed, and all harmonies, all rhythms. [Collectively] we worked with vocals the same as we work with guitar, bass of or drums. So I really enjoy this, and I really like what we what we have at the end.”
JINJER has always been a band that really does things their own way, how ever they like. They’re consistent and dedicated, while also having the creative minds that allow for fluidity. The complete freedom to play with variable sounds and styles feels like an exciting prospect when working on Duél. “Every song is just its own thing, so we didn’t think about how it will be in the whole album,” Vlad explains earnestly. “We didn’t plan outright which song will be after each song. So, like, after we have all songs, we start to thinking about how it will be listening in the album. [It’s cool because] when we doing a song, we are just doing one song and nobody knows where exactly in the album it will be. Maybe some bands can like thinking about it like the concept of the album and like how the story of the album will be, but we’re not. We’re just doing song after the song after the song.”
“As you can hear, we have such different songs. One song is like pure hardcore, another song can be like super melancholic, or if you’re listening the song called Tumbleweed, somebody told us that it’s doom metal. Yeah every song is, in my opinion, different. It’s hard to think about how it about the conception of everything. So lyrically, of course, Tatiana can make the concept, especially when she has all songs together to write the lyrics. For me, I think it’s impossible, because first demo was written two and a half years ago. It’s a long time actually to make every song, because we can write the song, and the next one will be in like, two months. And after two months, third, you know, so, like it’s impossible to think about concept for all that time.”
Regardless of how they stitch together the details of their tapestry, JINJER’s latest outing in Duél feels like the band are still overflowing with ideas and artistry. The potential to surprise is still embedded deep in them as a group, as speak their truth in ever dynamic new ways.
Duél is out now via Napalm Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS118 here:
For more information on JINJER like their official page on Facebook.
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