Wallflowers

“This album came out way different than anything we’ve done before.” That’s Jinjer vocalist Tatiana Shmailyuk talking about her band’s fourth full-length. Wallflowers sees the adventurous Ukrainian metal squad pushing even further into progressive and melodic territory—often in the same song, as evidenced by the dizzying seesaw effects of lead singles “Vortex” and “Mediator”. This time, the bulk of the music was composed by Jinjer drummer Vladislav “Vladi” Ulasevich, who led Shmailyuk, bassist Eugene Abdukhanov and guitarist Roman Ibramkhalilov down increasingly technical and surprising musical avenues. “We’re always open to trying something new,” Shmailyuk tells Apple Music. “I love experiments, and I really believe that a band dies when they stop evolving.” Below, she discusses each track on Wallflowers. “Call Me a Symbol” “The song has a dual meaning: On the one hand, it’s a song of a woman that is adored by many people no matter what she does—even if it’s a pile of shit. So, she is very confident and even maybe bloodthirsty or evil. Some of these divas are pretty evil, like a queen or goddess. On the other hand, that’s something I’ve really wanted to be. But I think I never will be like this because I’m not that egocentric. My nature is pretty shy, but I would like to be like this woman for at least one day.” “Colossus” “The lyrics for this one were written by Eugene, and he was writing this song for as long as I was writing all the songs on the album. I asked him, ‘Eugene, please, can you do this faster?’ I didn’t know what to expect, but he told me he was inspired by some political events of the past. So, I think the colossus is a symbol of a big country—that’s really what I can tell you. But for me, it’s more than this. It has a very human nature. I imagine a massive giant, like Gulliver.” “Vortex” “It’s the first single and also the first song I started to write lyrics to—and also the first song I started to record. It’s dedicated to all those people li