Jinjer

There are two artists of the same name:

JINJER – a pop-grop.

JINJER is an Ukrainian groove metal band formed in 2009.

2009 – 2012

Once at the very beginning of their way in their hometown somebody said behind their backs: Won’t go further than local gigs! Only pathos and crabs! Today JINJER is one of the best metal bands in Ukraine with wide popularity both in the motherland, all around Europe, and even overseas.

De facto the band was formed in 2009 and right off the bat, they released a promo-EP. However, it isn’t really clear if we can call that line-up a real JINJER band. There was a guy, Max, on vocals. He emigrated to the states right after the demo release. And generally, there was only one person who remained from that line-up – a band-founder, Dmitriy Oksen. Probably the real starting point for the band was when Tatiana Shmailyuk replaced the previous vocalist. It is interesting that originally Tatiana didn’t want to stay for long in the band, so to say she decided to help friends just for a while. But as it often happens the temporary turns into the permanent. Almost at the same time, Roman Ibramkhalilov joined the band too, the guitarist whose talent and skills would become one of the basics of the band’s sound. In 2010 JINJER recorded and released on the Internet two singles with Tatiana’s vocals and the band finally started to gain first fans and popularity, though only locally yet. Same time they received their first invitations to play in the regional center of Donetsk and other towns around it. But till the summer of 2011, the band couldn’t get a stable and ready-to-work lineup. After Eugene Abdiukhanov (a-k Kostyuk) joined the band, he also took charge of the band’s management and promotion, JINJER, at last, began their way to “wide popularity” on the underground metal stage of Ukraine.

The year 2012 started with the victory in a MUZTORG challenge (a huge international music store chain organizes a competition for all-genres bands). It’s funny that JINJER won a chance to record an album for free at a studio that had never recorded anything heavier than pop, so the band has never used that change, perhaps for the better. Also at the beginning of the year the band released on the Internet a new EP – INHALE. DO NOT BREATHE, and their first official video – Exposed as a Liar. The video blew up on the Ukrainian metal stage. The live show schedule was getting tighter and tighter and the top-point of the band’s concert activity was performances at Loadfest 1.0 in Lviv and in BINGO club in November 2012 where JINJER filmed a new video for SCISSORS song. It must be noted that for the whole year the band was touring exceptionally on their own costs paying for transport, accommodation, and catering themselves, but no obstacles could stop the musicians on their way to success. At the end of 2012 a Greek label – the Leaders Rec., contacted and offered JINJER to release INHALE. DO NOT BREATHE officially. The release was strengthened with a few more songs and a bonus, later on, was brought out by the Greek label as a full-length album. At the same time the band was found by a booking agency from Romania, Cavalleria Events, they offered JINJER a tour around Romania and Moldova.

2013

2013 started with the tour of 15 shows around Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. The culmination was in Kiev where JINJER shared the stage with CALIBAN from Germany. But one month before the beginning of the tour the band was to go through a hard challenge. The drummer, Aleksander Koziychuk, refused to go on the tour for some family reasons and circumstances. The tour was about to fail. The next morning, Eugene Mantulin, who had previously played with Kostyuk in other bands responded to JINJER’s call to work as a session drummer. This undoubtedly talented musician and a wonderful person managed to learn 11 songs of JINJER in a month. They went on the tour but came back home as an absolutely different band, with clear goals and plans. Mantulin remained in the line-up permanently. The international tour made promoters, metal audiences and other Ukrainian bands take JINJER seriously. At the end of the Spring, the band released a new lyric video and single NO HOARD OF VALUE which marked out some stylistic changes. The band made a bet on more complicated instrumental parts and the structure of songs. Stylistically JINJER moved from dogmas of metalcore to groove metal, progressive and episodically even death metal. During the summer of 2013, the band performed at open-air festivals. The performance at Rock’n’Sich festival on the same stage as TIAMAT and PAIN is notable. JINJER, for the first time in their career, gathered several thousands of metal fans under the stage making them slam, mosh and headbang like the last time in their life. At approximately the same time JINJER got the invitation to take part in the first metal challenge in Ukraine – the Best Ukrainian Metal Act 2013, which was to take place in October 2013. According to the regulations, a band for the contest was chosen by a jury – the most prominent Ukrainian promoters in the sphere of heavy music, but a winner was chosen by audience voting. JINJER understood that they had no chances to win as the other contestants were local Kiev bands with at least 10 years of experience with much bigger fan support in the capital of Ukraine. However, the band accepted the challenge and went to the capital just to play a good show. On the way to Kiev, something terrible happened that could put a full stop, not only in their career but also in the musicians’ lives. One day before the contest late at night JINJER got into an awful traffic accident and fell into 4 meter-deep ditch. Luckily nobody was hurt seriously and the band’s van got only a broken radiator and bumper. Having mustered up all their will, courage and strength, and money too, the band fixed the van at the closest service station and the next day arrived exactly for the soundcheck. Eventually, JINJER was voted to be the Best Ukrainian Metal Act of 2013. The rest of the year was spent at the studio composing and recording their next full-length album – CLOUD FACTORY.

2014

2014 started with a release of a lead single from the upcoming album. A video for CLOUD FACTORY repeated the success of its forerunner two years before. Then the band performed at BIG LOVE FEST where JINJER confirmed the status of the leaders of the Ukrainian metal stage. CLOUD FACTORY album was released at the Leaders Rec. in March 2014 and to support the album JINJER set off on a one-month tour around Europe playing gigs in Poland, Germany, Czech, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. In the summer of 2014 due to tragic events in native Donbass (East of Ukraine, armed conflict between the separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and the Ukrainian government) the band had to move to Lviv breaking all stereotypes about disaffection between the west and the east in Ukraine. In 2014 JINJER joined the line-up of absolutely all open-air festivals in Ukraine, including the biggest fest – Zaxid Fest, where the band again gathered several thousands of metalheads under the stage, making EKTOMORF, who was the headliner of the night, feel nervous. After a few weeks, JINJER played at the Bucovina Rock Castle festival in Romania where they shared the stage with such legends as NAZARETH and DOG EAT DOG.
One month later JINJER went through a tragedy that shocked not only fans and musicians of Ukrainian metal scene but also people who were not connected with either the band or heavy music in general. JINJER were at their close friend in Kiev, having rest on their way to Russia where they were supposed to play a couple of shows. Everyone was asleep when Eugene Mantulin went to smoke in the kitchen. He sat on the widow, napped, and fell off the third floor down. Only because of the unity of musicians, fans, people who were not indifferent, they managed to collect the sum necessary for an urgent operation and thus save Mantulin’s life and give him a chance to walk and play the drums in the Future. The band had to cancel a large tour around Europe and Great Britain. At some point, the future of JINJER was unclear and doubtful. After a while, getting off the stress the band decided to look for a substitution for the drums. The task itself was incredibly difficult as Mantulin was definitely one of the best young drummers in Ukraine, there weren’t many people who could play his lines, and there were even fewer who could accept a lifestyle of a professional musician in heavy metal. JINJER chose a young and prospective fellow whose name is Dmitriy Kim. The band knew the guy since they recorded at Beast Rec. studio in Gorlovka, where the new drummer had worked as a sound engineer. Without any hesitations Dmitriy moved to Lviv, settled with the others at their country house, and started to learn songs. Same as Mantulin he managed to take over 11 songs in a month. On November 8th JINJER was playing at LOADFEST III in Lviv and the next day they set off on a 17-day tour around Ukraine, Russia, and Romania.

At the end of 2014, JINJER released on their official youtube channel their first official live bootleg – the performance at FajtFest in Czech which took place in June 2014. Following this, the band released an official tour video for a song «Желаю — значит получу» which summarized all concert activity for the whole year.

Also on December 23rd Eugene Kostyuk, the bassist became the first father in the band, he and his wife had a son.
In 2014 Ukrainian and foreign music editions gave a lot of their attention to JINJER. Thus European magazines, e.g. The Legacy, Metal Hammer, and Rock Hard, reviewed and gave high scores to CLOUD FACTORY album in the same line with international stars’ albums. Ukrainian editions summing up the year recognized JINJER as one of the brightest Ukrainian bands and Tatiana joined the top 10 best young Ukrainian singers of all genres. In Ukraine, the CLOUD FACTORY album joined the top 20 albums of 2014, the only metal album among pop and indie bands.

2015

At the beginning of 2015, JINJER went on a short mini-tour around Russia. Its top point was the performance at the biggest anniversary in-door festival in Russia – STARS FUCTORY festival, which was held in the two largest cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg. JINJER was accepted very warmly by the audience despite all the political and military tensions between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Critics in Russia claimed JINJER to be a real discovery of the festival and a new wave of Eastern-European metal music. The band proved that true metalheads stay united in all situations regardless of borders, geopolitics, and other bullshit. However, after getting back home JINJER received a lot of criticism from ultra-nationalistic movements, the band even was threatened several times, a few concerts, later on, were almost canceled due to attacks and threats by Nazi and fascistic groups. Fortunately, thanks to huge fan support and also support by the biggest Ukrainian festivals JINJER managed to avoid the real troubles and violence. Anyway, the band remains under the target of marginal right-wing elements, and a victim of the fox hunt in Ukraine.

In February 2015, JINJER had to go through another obstacle. Preparing for the Spring OUTLANDER TOUR around the EU, band-members applied for Greek Schengen visas. Even though the band had all necessary documents and invitations provided by the Leaders Records label located in Greece, all five of JINJER got a refusal. For this reason, they had to postpone the Polish part of the tour to mid-May. Only with the great assistance and understanding of the Polish Consulate JINJER managed to get Polish visas and be ready for the middle of March to tour around Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. It has to be noted the tour had both positive and negative sides. Apart from awesome shows and full clubs everywhere, the band had a wonderful chance to check out such fascinating sights as the Parthenon in Athens, Coliseum in Rome, and many more. On the other hand, every band member got ill at least once on the tour. Some had a fever of 40 degrees. Nevertheless, they had to play shows almost every day.

After one month and 25 shows the band got back to Ukraine. At the end of April JINJER made their first exclusive full-time show in Kiev, Sentrum Club. The performance was caught on cameras and recorded live. It would be released as the band’s debut official DVD entitled CROWD FACTORY at the beginning of 2016. Originally the band was about to release the DVD in the Autumn of 2015, but due to a number of technical problems that appeared on the production line, it had to be postponed several times. This DVD would be the last release with the Greek Leaders Records for the band.

At the end of Spring 2015, JINJER traveled to Germany to participate in OPEN AIR am BERG festival. It opened the season of open-airs for JINJER. In total the band performed at 7 festivals during the summer season 2015 in Poland, Germany, Romania, Albania, and Ukraine sharing the stage with At the Gates, Marduk at RockStadt Fest, being a co-headliner for Kreator at Zaxid Fest.

But in the middle of the summer, after the performance at the Black Sea Festival the guitarist Dimitriy Oksen shocked the band with his decision to leave JINJER. It was absolutely unexpected, there was no hint or sign for this, but the original founder of JINJER left and actually gave up music. As he claimed in his farewell note to the fans: “I would like to devote time and efforts to some more of my dreams and ambitions”. The rest of the shows in 2015 JINJER played in four.
The band at first tried to look for a substitution, but after a while, they took a decision to stay a 4-piece band. The main reasons for that were that first of all it was rather difficult to find a guitarist with appropriate technical skills and charisma, but also that no-one could understand what it means to be on long tours and live a life of a musician in the modern world. So at least temporarily JINJER decided not to look for a new member.

The next day after performing at Respublika Festival in September, the band went to the city of Lutsk to film a brand new video for a new song entitled Sit Stay Roll Over. The audio for the song was recorded in late August at Morton Studio in Kiev. At first, the band planned to bring it out as an opening single for the upcoming EP, scheduled for late Autumn. But a couple of weeks after the new video clip was out in October 2015, when it gained more than 100 000 in the first seven days, JINJER got an offer from one of the most influential metal labels in the world – NAPALM RECORDS. After two months of negotiating and at least 10 offers from other labels from all over the world, JINJER signed a worldwide record deal with and joined the family of Napalm Records. It brought some changes to the band’s plans. JINJER had to cancel the EP release and started preparing material for their new album “King of Everything” which was released in 2016.

Somewhere between touring vans, roadside pit stops, backstage rooms, sound checks, hotel rooms, visa applications, and flights to new tour destinations, JINJER buried themselves in the rehearsal room once again to compose 5 brand new tracks for what would become the MICRO EP, written not only for the fans but for themselves, as they needed something new to keep their sanity on the road. Released on January 11th, 2019 and coinciding with their European Tour start together with Soilwork and Amorphis, the MICRO EP was received with open arms from fans and critics alike and spawned instant favorites APE and PERENNIAL, climbed to the top of many industry charts and radio station lists worldwide and once again showcased the musical depth and songwriting talent of the band, as well as Tatiana’s amazing vocal range.

LINE-UP:
Tatiana Shmailyuk – vocals
Roman Ibramkhalilov – guitar
Eugene Abdiukhanov – bass-guitar
Vladislav Ulasevish – drums

Links:
http://www.jinjer-metalband.com/about
http://www.facebook.com/JinjerOfficial
http://vk.com/jinjer_metal
http://www.youtube.com/user/dmitriyoksen
http://jinjer.bandcamp.com
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