Nightfly
King Of Everything is the second album from Ukrainian metal band Jinjer. The band combines metalcore with groove metal and dare I use the word, djent.
The band are great players and lay down some complex grooves but their biggest strength lies in vocalist Tatiana Shmailyuk who has a beautifully expressive and powerful voice when singing in clean tones. She can also scream and growl with the best of them but becomes more anonymous in this mode. Despite the fact that the album gets a bit samey at times with relentless staccato riffs the ten songs are largely enjoyable with some strong hooks. They’re certainly at their best when Tatiana sings cleanly adding some melody over the largely percussive nature of the material. Fortunately she uses her clean vocals quite a lot but I’d be more than happy to hear her sing like this all the time. The band does let up on the barrage of riffs occasionally – mainly towards the end, Pisces being a prime example, injecting some welcome mellower moments and colour. The short Beggar’s Dance that closes the album is a surprise and has a jazz feel with a bossa nova groove. Whilst leaving metal territory a bit more of this sort of thing could have benefited the album quite a lot by adding more variation.
Overall then King Of Everything is a very good and enjoyable album but does give away most of its secrets on the first listen and a few standout tracks could have nailed it for them. Definitely a band worth keeping an eye on in the future though.
