Jinjer
Cloud Factory

In the middle of the distressed eastern Ukraine is where Jinjer has their base and it's a band that according to them selves have been metal fans since they could stand up. This is their second album and personally, I think it's as chaotic as eastern Ukraine has been this year.

Jinjer has a certain playfulnes over them. They have a pretty humorus album cover and that's just one of the things that could be considered funny. Another example comes at the very end of the song Who Is Gonnea Be The One that feels like something from a cabaret whilst the rest of the track is more Cannibal Corpse.

The vocalist Tatiana Booyaka Shmaylyuk offers everything from clean and sweet vocals to the most brutal of growlings but it's not really a voice that takes home the awards. Yet, she do impress me with her growling in particular and the wide range as well. The clean vocals often tends to go in the vein of Bonnie Tyler or some other hoarse and unpolished female voice - it suits the music quite well that has a sort of Soviet industrial area-feeling over it. The tracks are eight and takes 37 minutes to go through and they varies quite a lot in quality. Some tracks are pretty decent, some of them entertaining and most of all I like Cloud Factory and Bad Water, which both keeps somewhat to a straight line and not flipping out all over the place. And in the case of Jinjer, keeping to a straight line is a good thing as when they don't use the ruler they tend to get a bit too curvy in their direction - sometimes heading more back and forth than Putin on a swing.

The two opening tracks of the album kind of say it all and if you like them then this should be an album for you. Outlander has mostly growling in it while A Plus Or A Minus is mostly done with clean vocals. Both tracks are as chaotic as an American military invasion and the music shifts constantly in tempo while the string section keeps the riffs simple and the drums are mixed so high you can't help but feeling them. It kind of reminds me of a junkyard - it's messy, dirty and things are all over the place without any form of order.

I feel the album has some value and you can play it without feeling the urge to run away constantly. However, it's also an album I'd keep away from the repeat button because if I did, I'd probably end up like an American - with an assault riffle in my hands on a school, shooting people. It's a decent album, but definitely not something for all days in a week.

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