Times' New Roman

ON ALBUM NUMBER FIVE, JINJER GUITARIST ROMAN IBRAMKHALILOV IS LAYING DOWN SOME OF THE HARDEST-SWINGING RIFFS OF HIS CAREER

- By Amit Sharma

MORE OFTEN THAN not with metal bands, it's one or two guitar players who oversee the lion's share of the writing process, meticulously piecing together the riffs at the heart of every song. Ukrainian metal quartet Jinjer, however, opted for a different creative path, with drummer Vladislav Ulasevich masterminding both melody and rhythm. It might be an unorthodox approach to composition, but the fruits of his efforts have resulted in the group becoming front-runners in a new wave of exciting heavy music alongside Sleep Token and Spiritbox.

Some guitar players might struggle to keep their ego in check in such circumstances, but not Roman Ibramkhalilov, who believes the quality of the music should always come first.

"These songs were written by our drummer, like the last few albums," he says about their fifth full-length, titled Duél. "It's my sound, but they're not my riffs. Vladislav plays a lot of instruments, so when he joined the band in 2016, he started to come up with more and more ideas. He’ll have seven or eight ideas at the beginning of each album process and all of them will be great. We don’t care who did what; it’s all about how good the songs are. If the idea is good, we move forward. Maybe he has inspirations that I don’t, but whatever he’s doing, it just works. Together we are Jinjer.”

What would you say are the hardest riffs on this album?