In a new interview with MoreCore.TV conducted at this weekend’s Rock Am Ring festival in Nürburgring, Germany, bassist Eugene Abdukhanov of Ukrainian modern metallers JINJER spoke about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the follow-up to the band’s 2021 album “Wallflowers”. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “A lot of new music has been written. Demos [have] been recorded.
“I think we are waiting for a moment, point where we just say, ‘Okay, let’s start,’ and then we go to the studio and record the new record, the new album,” he explained. “I think that music-wise, material-wise, we are at eighty percent of the new album.”
Asked about the musical direction of the new JINJER material, Eugene said: “There always will be something that has never been [there] before. Otherwise there is no need to make new music.
“It is hard to say now what exactly it’s gonna be,” he continued. “And to some extent, I just don’t want to make new spoilers. But it’s gonna be definitely different from the previous album, for sure.
“On the ‘Wallflowers’ album, I think we went even [in the] doom metal direction, to some extent, because there are some very slow and very moody parts,” he added. “On the new record, to some extent, in some way, it’s going the other way — maybe death metal direction, something like this. Something really powerful, again groovy and something that just hits you, punches you straight to the face.”
JINJER played its first live show since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on June 10, 2022 at last year’s edition of the Greenfield Festival, which was held in Interlaken, Switzerland. The concert took place just days after it was announced that JINJER had been given permission from authorities to leave their war-torn nation and tour Europe as ambassadors of the country.
JINJER frontwoman Tatiana Shmayluk told Bloodstock TV at last year’s Bloodstock Open Air festival that the war in Ukraine hadn’t served as a powerful surge of cathartic inspiration for any of the band’s new music: “Not really,” she said. “I don’t know why. Honestly, I’ve written some war songs way before JINJER, first of all, and way before war even started in Ukraine. And I don’t know how, but it’s easy for me to write about war when it’s not happening around me. But when it started, I was absolutely devastated and paralyzed creatively. I cannot write about that. I still cannot process that. I think it’s such a great trauma that it takes years and years to process, not only for me but mostly for the citizens of Ukraine, for the victims. I really think that it’s not my time to write another war song right now.”
But Eugene clarified: “Actually, we’ve never had war songs. We’ve never written anything which is militaristic or anything like that… We have a number of songs in our discography which are peacemaking songs, songs which call for peace, and calling them war songs can be a bit misleading because it may just make people think differently of what they really are, to be honest.
“Tatiana says that, well, she hasn’t written any lyrics but we have written a number of compositions musically in these circumstances since the war started. So definitely there is a creative reflection of the events already,” he revealed.
This summer, JINJER will return to America as the support act for DISTURBED on the latter band’s 2023 headline “Take Back Your Life” tour. Additional support will come from BREAKING BENJAMIN.
Photo credit: Annie Atlasman
