Napalm Records
The music certainly seems to be arranged to reflect his. The pace is relentless, with no long songs on the record. The tone of the record is set from the get-go, on “Tantrum”, with dense, near-frantic playing, very much in Jinjer’s trademark style. Early records have had more of a groove to them. This one does not lean too heavily on that, but rather favours pace, energy and most of all tension. The most recent single, “Rogue”, has the same headlong brutal underpinnings, nearly pitching over.
The record exhibits two kinds of tension, and they are not always in sync. There’s enormous emotional tension, as we should expect, given the narratives in play, which comes across from vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk’s harsh vocals which have an anger all their own, sometimes, as on “Hedonist” sounding close to street performance poetry in their openness and guttural honesty. Her clean vocals also convey considerable emotion, her vibrato wringing it out at the ends of longer phrases.
The second tension is more subtle and more problematic. In many of the songs, particularly in the first half of the record, the vocal lines, especially the clean ones, do not seem to fit all that well with the underlying arrangements. This isn’t a “Lamb Lies Down…” situation, where the vocal lines are arguably in the wrong place, but rather that Shmayluk appears to have had to shoehorn her melodies and words into the music as best she can. The result isn’t always satisfactory, and combined with the consistent double-tracking of her clean vocals, overall it feels awkward, as if the band is trying to hard to break the mould.
It isn’t like this for the whole record. Later tracks like “Kafka” find a very effective unity of music and vocals, and the songwriting feels more mature and sophisticated. Indeed, from “Green Serpent” on, the record changes tone somewhat, as if we are hearing songs written or arranged at a different time. Here, the musicianship is more obviously first-rate, whereas earlier we only get a hint from bassist Eugene Abdukhanov’s excellent melodic break on “Tantrum”. While it is remarkable that the band can play together so effectively at breakneck speed, their skills are so much more brought to the fore in the syncopated, wandering, progressive metal riffs which guitarist Roman Ibramkhalilov has written for this part of the album. We see this again on “Dark Bile”. These tracks at the heart of the record are also more accessible for fans who are perhaps familiar with Leprous, TesseracT or Haken. Similarly, the 2024 single “Someone’s Daughter” provides a more obviously radio-friendly piece to bring the album forward, and with no shame either as it is a strong piece of writing with good progressive metal guitar playing and an excellent vocal performance.
The record closes with a return to the tone and style of the earlier pieces, and again we find some awkwardness with the production and arrangements, with the drums on “A Tongue So Sly” unaccountably shifting from right to left across the sonic space of the record as if they had been recorded in two different studios and spliced together. The title track starts with the most obviously well-articulated and intricate drumming from Vlad Ulasevich, and again the guitar writing is complex and intriguing. However, here, as elsewhere as the record, the song writing feels at odds with itself.
We should never criticise a band for trying to grow, to break boundaries, or to make a musical statement, but it is hard to avoid judging them by their results. “Duél”’s strengths lie in the variation between the notional first and second sides of the record, which gives it a slightly broader palate than the start of the album implies, and the general quality of the musicianship, especially from Ibramkhalilov. Shmayluk’s lyrics are also a dizzying array of images ironic and brutal in equal measure. However, with the apparent difficulties with the songwriting and arrangements, and the arguable overproduction of Shmayluk clean vocals, it’s a difficult record to applaud, though tracks like “Kafka” and “Dark Bile” may extend their reach. The new material should also go down well live and performance may well iron out some of the issues as the songs find a life of their own on stage.
4/6 | Alex Maines
Utgivelsesdato: 07. februar 2025