AKU (Polònia) presenta nou EP: "There's More of Them" #Aku #Experimental #ProgressiveGrooveMetal #Maig2025 #Polònia #NouEp #Metall #Metal #MúsicaMetal #MetalMusic

HERTA (Grècia) presenta nou àlbum: "Crossing the Illusion" #Herta #ProgressiveGrooveMetal #Djent #Maig2025 #Grècia #NouÀlbum #Metall #Metal #MúsicaMetal #MetalMusic

ORIA (Grècia) presenta nou àlbum: "This Future Wants Us Dead" #Oria #ProgressiveGrooveMetal #Abril2025 #Grècia #NouÀlbum #Metall #Metal #MúsicaMetal #MetalMusic

WIND DOWN (Polònia) presenta nou àlbum: "The Burning Past" #WindDown #ProgressiveGrooveMetal #Abril2025 #Polònia #NouÀlbum #Metall #Metal #MúsicaMetal #MetalMusic

ZŌ (Estats Units) presenta nou àlbum: "Crooked" #Zō #ProgressiveGrooveMetal #Març2025 #EstatsUnits #NouÀlbum #Metall #Metal #MúsicaMetal #MetalMusic

Jinjer – Du​é​l Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

Despite the coverage in these halls referencing 2016’s King of Everything as “…so inessential, so boring, and so forgettable…,” Jinjer has persisted through almost ten years, from then, of rising notoriety. With hundreds of thousands of listeners on streaming services, and a touring schedule loaded with international dates and festival appearances, it’s safe to say that the Ukrainian nu-prog-groove outfit has earned some sort of place at the metal table. Of course, their alternative rock bend and penchant for half-time at a stuttering, deathcore crawl ensure that that place is not at the table of any traditional heavy metal sound. A seat hardly matters, though, when the crowd stands ready to jumpdafuckup with a drop and down-tuned chug. Can Jinjer’s fifth full-length Du​é​l even hope to conquer the naysayers?

Yo, yo, yo, that’s a no, no, no—Jinjer hangs around, groove to the bone, unapologetic in dedication to their drop A riffcraft and tough guy build-ups. At the center of Du​é​l—in case you’re not one of the ninety-million views of Jinjer’s breakout “Pisces” live performance—sits vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk’s one-woman alt croon to howling demon performance, both full in nasally rock control and bellowing in shredded throat prowess. Whether slathered with a Staley-tinged (Alice in Chains), Kittie-indebted sneer (“Tumbleweed,” “Someone’s Daughter”) or cranked with a scraggly, Otep-ian fervor (“Green Serpent,” “Dark Bile”), Shmayluk dominates the draw of memorability that Jinjer, and Du​é​l, have to offer.

The reliance on Shmayluk’s charisma, however, has never felt quite as strong on other Jinjer outings as it does on Du​é​l. While sliding scale riffs and heavy kit syncopation, particularly in well-placed chiming cymbal chatter, skew progressive in a brooding, fugal fashion (just about every melodic layer feels Baroque in inspiration), it’s the well-worn path of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus that spells the battlefield on which Du​é​l places its every piece. On older releases, Shmayluk and Jinjer have been a little more experimental in approach, both letting their native tongue provide an additional melancholy and allowing left-field influences (like reggae). But in an unwavering contrapuntal aggro-shuffle, Eugene Abdukhanov ensures that his bass prancing core propels each track forward. This Meshuggah-cadence, Tool-tricky possession shows in beautiful tapping runs scattered across slow-burn bridges and fading light outros. And while his fancy finger talents inspire routine closed-eye head bobs, they also too fall into service of a framing djentrified guitar drag or deathcore-leaning breakdown.

In an album as uniform as Du​é​l, the details in production and pacing make or break the effectiveness of the hypnotic groove for which it aims. On the one hand, drummer Vladislav Ulasevich’s rhythmic choices—his dry and dampened snare, quick clanging cymbal accents—all live in service to frame Jinjer’s low-end stomp and swagger. However, in that same low-impact, woody plonk, no other sounds exist to compliment its unsatisfying tat-tat-tat, with only certain tracks that live in relentlessly driving mosh grooves or thrash-speed breaks (“Rogue,” “Fast Draw,” “Du​é​l”) finding sufficient speed and brightness to feel like a fulfilling sonic mold. All too often, Jinjer leans on a droning, mid-paced lurch that has to work overtime to overcome auditory inertia. And though Shmayluk spends a higher percentage of Du​é​l in a cleaner mode than past works, which is a mode that suits her and Jinjer well, the incessant urge for every song to force a hammy aggression—a classic death metal “BLEGH” even finding its way into “Hedonist”—into every other verse or bridge to comply to the Jinjer formula wears on the lesser tracks that slog about.

Familiarity can be frustrating. And for a band like Jinjer, the frequent trips down big riff lanes that sound a lot like their other work widens the gap between rippers and skippers. Du​é​l sounds like Jinjer, which is an accomplishment in a genre amalgamation that boasts many more ill-advised backward hats than it does influential, legacy acts. However, good bands don’t necessarily always need to make good albums. Jinjer is a good band, and their own dramatic and skillful identity shines through in full force on a number of tracks that Du​é​l hosts. But with eleven tracks that run in a narrow pool of lengths, a curated scope of execution, and at varying levels of quality within each iteration, it’s hard to call Du​é​l a good album.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream1
Label: Napalm Records | Bandcamp
Websites: jinjer-metal.com | jinjer-jinjer.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: February 7th, 2025

#25 #2025 #AlternativeRock #Duel #Feb25 #GrooveMetal #Jinjer #Kittie #Meshuggah #Metalcore #NapalmRecords #NuMetal #Otep #ProgressiveGrooveMetal #Review #Reviews #Tool #UkrainianMetal

Sadraen kommen wie Gojira aus Frankreich und klingen auch ziemlich wie die großen Brüder, legen aber hier und da noch eine Schippe Technical Death mit drauf, ohne zu technisch zu werden. Es malmt und qualmt an allen Ecken, die Stimmung ist düster und bisweilen herrlich melancholisch melodisch, was mir besonders gut gefällt. Progressive Groove Metal auf hohem Level - klare Empfehlung und Danke für den Tipp @fallofcarthage 🔥🕺
#sadraen #deathmetal #GrooveMetal #progressivegroovemetal #NowPlaying

Exist – Hijacking the Zeitgeist Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

Following the uniquely progressive death(ish) trend of increasing Hippietude1, Exist has slowly morphed over the years from a spacey, Meshuggah-ish prog act in the vein of Intrinsic-era The Contortionist2 to a Pink Floyd-ian tricky-rhythm rock, primarily, outfit. 2020’s Egoiista, as such, saw coverage in these halls as prizing long-form style over impactful substance—still good though (if a tad underrated). In its dreamy, waltzing soundscape, it also functioned for me as an alluring escape in a year that was, well, quite the weird one. And, as things go in life and major happenings, longtime guitarist Matt Rossa (ex-Svengahli) stepped down and paved the way for WAIT band-leader Charlie Eron to hop on in slick-stringed support. As far as changes go, seeing as WAIT hosts an almost identical lineup to Exist, the personnel couldn’t have been more familiar. But could anyone have seen this Hippietude reversal coming?

Exist’s members’ breadth of live performance prowess often made it seem like Exist acted as an outlet for their softer ideas. Guitarist and vocalist Max Phelps tours frequently with the fully hippified Cynic, but also functions as the revived voice of Chuck Schuldiner on many Death to All bills. Bassist Alex Weber swings his fretless stick about with the likes of elevated slammers Defeated Sanity and melotech legends Obscura. Drummer Brody Smith has hit live with techy flippers Equipoise and groove-monsters Alluvial. Long story short, these guys know heavy, but up until this newest Hijacking the Zeitgeist, that heavy often fell to the side of an alt-rock inflected, jazz-kissed rock. But under the guidance and endjineering of Anup Sastry (ex-Skyharbor and much session work), this refreshed version of Exist reaches forth with both the shortest and punchiest album of their career.

Hijacking the Zeitgeist wastes zero time letting you know that it intends to churn pits with a smart and successful grooves. Between the true Meshuggah syncopation of lead jam “Blue Light Infinite,” and ode-to-microaggressions “One Degree Removed from Human,” and the frenetic fret-tumbling of “A Path to Nowhere,” Exist’s metallic pedigree has never felt more immediate and alive. But neither the wide, resonant chord stabs, Cynic-like riff crawls, nor nasal croon vanishes for long—even against the near-true breakdown of “Thief of Joy”— still weaving a modern and uniquely Exist path throughout this more aggressive landscape. Phelps can’t stray away from belting a forlorn chorus call or high vibration bridge, but his vocal qualities there, and too in his diverse harsh palette, continue to grow more pleasant and ferocious with each outing.

The cost of the burgeoning intensity throughout Hijacking the Zeitgeist, unfortunately, rests in a djentrification of tone. A scooped and compressed guitar attack isn’t necessarily offensive on its own, of course. Many bands in the 00s likes Textures or SikTh found a happy medium in their chunky but bright-chord and bass-infested expressions. The path that Sastry takes mirrors that more of the rhythm-focused bounce boost that he pushed with the WAIT record, which consequently is very modern djent. Despite the low dynamics, no moments of the album ever come across as painfully loud, with Weber’s bass in particular retaining it’s nasally clang. And to work around some of the dynamic issues, songs with longer stretches of clean strumming (“Hijacking the Zeitgest,” “Window to the All”) never allow those passages to bleed over distorted tones using focus as a substitute for layering.

This new fit takes some getting used to, and on my initial spins, I had to fight my resistance to change. But once I let the massive grooves that Hijacking the Zeitgeist has to offer take control of my head, it’s hill-climbing energy revealed itself in spades. The truth is that Exist knows exactly what they’re doing and that they can make this new, groove-focused sound work just as well as their previous work is testament to their abilities. Free of any fat, Hacking the Zeitgeist’s presents few issues beyond its lower dynamic master to having a good time. It’s rare to see a progressive band re-galvanize a waning march—Fates Warning’s Darkness in a Different Light comes to mind—but Exist wears it as naturally as a band who’s slammed from the start. And if they can find a way to marry their more spacious past with their low-frills present, who knows what the future holds.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Prosthetic Records | Bandcamp
Websites: exist.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/exist
Releases Worldwide: April 12th, 2024

#2024 #35 #Alluvial #AmericanMetal #Apr24 #Cynic #DeathMetal #Exist #FatesWarning #HijackingTheZeitgeist #LawOfIncreasingHippietude #Meshuggah #Obscura #ProgressiveDeathMetal #ProgressiveGrooveMetal #ProgressiveMetal #ProstheticRecords #Review #Reviews #SikTh #Svengahli #Textures #TheContortionist #WAIT