The group's latest headlining North American tour will take it to San Antonio's Aztec Theatre on Monday, Oct. 7, with Hanabie and Born of Osiris opening.
The vocals of frontwoman Tatiana Shmailyuk — which appear to effortlessly jump between soulful croons to menacing death growls — are the immediate hook into the Jinjer sound. But it's clear the quartet has plenty more to offer.
The band wields a conventional guitar-bass-drums lineup to hammer together an impressive array of influences, tempering punishing its metalcore and proggy angularity with grooves borrowing from R&B, soul, funk and reggae.
At present, Jinjer is finishing a followup to its critically praised 2021 album Wallflowers, and has already released two singles teasing the release: "Someone's Daughter" and "Rogue." The latter ranks as one of the most brutal songs of the band's career.
For this interview, Jinjer asked not to discuss politics or the war in its home country, and the Current agreed. What follows is a phone conversation with bassist Eugene Abdiukhanov that was was edited for length and clarity.
The new single, "Rogue," is one of the heaviest things Jinjer has released. Interestingly, it comes at a time when the band is gaining a lot more international exposure. Was your intention to release something that signals that even though you have more visibility, you're still dedicated to a heavy, progressive sound?
It's very hard to answer the question, because there was no back plan to release this heavy single in order to make a statement. We just picked a good song and a song, which in our opinion, stands very well for the second single from the upcoming album. Originally we had “Someone's Daughter,” which I think was a fantastic song to start with, and to introduce new material to fans. And while picking up a song for the second single, we didn't hesitate much. We had a couple of songs to choose from. But look, just how straightforward it is from the perspective of a composition, it’s just a pure banger. But at the same time, it's super-technical and progressive for a banger. I think it's a pinnacle of a pure, progressive, heavy Jinjer song. Straightforward for the progressive genre, but still, it hits you straight to the face. And I don't think we were thinking about making statements or something like that with the song. We just wanted to share it with fans because we love the song itself.
In a recent interview, Tatiana said there’s a very 19th-century feel pervading the material you're working on now — sort of a classical romanticism. What does that mean? Do you also see that in Jijner’s new music?
I definitely see it. Let me explain. There are different layers of our music — of our art — as with all art. It's not just one layer. It has certainly different aspects hidden under the surface. And even from the technical perspective of composition and arrangements, what we are writing now and what we're playing now in the recent material, it is greatly influenced by 19th-century classical music. Not only 19th century, to be honest, but just generally classical music of the 19th and 20th centuries. And it can be heard just through the notes.
On top of everything, over the years, we were developing our musical style and our approach to music, and we doubled down on the, let's say, classical influences by just managing our arrangements in our songs in the way that we sometimes sound like a classical orchestra just in three people. So, let's say Roman [Ibramkhalilov] on the guitar, me on bass, we are responsible for what would be called the faction scene in an orchestra.
And, really, a lot of our music just from the arrangement perception and the arrangement point of view is sort of symphonic. It may sound kind of weird, but if you really look into this and deeper into this, it can be seen. And this is where everything starts and just builds — the lyrics and the messages we send, and just generally. Because there is some sort of a philosophy in all the lyrics, no matter what. If Tatiana wrote it — because she writes most of the lyrics, or sometimes I write some pieces of lyrics on previous albums — we have some sort of philosophy. And this philosophy can be actually described and put — if we must put it into a box — I would call it humanism.
What we are promoting in our lyrics and messages is humanism. And this is the philosophy which was born in the 19th century. So, when Tatiana says there is a 19th century ... flow, it definitely is there. So 100%, yes! I can talk about this just nonstop, just finding Easter eggs and links which just send you to that period of time.
There’s always been a drama and an epic quality to European metal that hasn’t always been present in U.S. metal, which early on, especially, was much more rooted in conventional rock song structures. While that’s changed over time, I wonder if all of you grew up exposed to classical music and classical composition and that's had a major influence on your approach to your music.
Yeah, for sure. I would even talk about this bigger. We did not only grow up absorbing classical music, we grew up absorbing classical culture. Because all our education, everything we learned at school — all the subjects, not only musical education. Musical education was purely about classical music. So we listened to that, and we learned all those most prominent works by European composers, classical composers, Austria-Hungarians and Austrians, Russian composers, just everyone. And that is with fine arts also. At school, we have to learn about the best artists, best painters, just throughout the years. And I think all that influenced us in just the best way it could.
Jinjer’s lyrics tend to be fairly abstract and are often focused more on philosophy than being protest songs or based on mythic imagery. Do you think that stems from your upbringing and the way you were educated?
Of course, it comes exactly from there. Me and Tatiana, we actually, we [are] graduated linguists, and we had to study and learn poetry as almost a science. … Some artists, some vocalists, they tend to write lyrics just as a proclamation. They speak about things directly, just they point —figuratively, they point their fingers. What Tatiana does and what I do — what we were taught, and what we learned — is how to use language and how to use the tools in the language in order to create paintings in the form of words. So, it definitely comes from there. From the education and what we learned at school, and later on in university. And, of course, what we learned through legions, tons of artists, tons of writers and poets.
$53-$103, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 7, Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com.
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