Review & Video Premiere: Iron Jinn, Iron Jinn
Based in The Netherlands, Iron Jinn release their self-titled debut album April 21 through Stickman Records, celebrating with a release show at Roadburn Festival on April 22. The venerable Tilburg fest is a fitting showcase for the band, who’ll present their nine-song/60-minute 2LP cycle after having made their live debut at Roadburn 2018 (review here), working then under the moniker Iron Chin and entrancing a packed 013 Green Room with material it had never heard before. With the collaboration between guitarist/vocalists Wout Kemkens (Shaking Godspeed) and Oeds Beydals (Death Alley, Gewapend Beton, Molassess, The Devil’s Blood) at its foundation and the lineup solidified with Birth of Joy‘s Bob Hogenelst on drums and Gerben Bielderman (Pronk, Pauw, Helm Op, Figgie, etc.) on bass, the album sprinkles moments of clarity amid headed-way-down plunges into atmospheric ethereality, seeking to and succeeding in immersing listeners in a sprawl of dark and progressive heavy rock with the stated goal of evoking the feel of dreams.
It is ostensibly psychedelic, but an is-it-real psychedelia of the unconscious more than an effects wash, and in moments like the winding build to the crescendo of “Blood Moon Horizon” tucked away before closer “Cage Rage” with its extended drone finish or the dual-vocal melody of “Ego Loka” rounding out the three-song leadoff salvo with particularly Swansy vibes after “Winding World” first sounds the alarm at the very beginning of the record — howling lead guitar with frenetic strums behind; Beydals and Kemkens announcing the band’s arrival — before the string sounds swap channels, the effigies are burnt and the mellowing resolution feels like a gift after and before “Soft Healers” plunges once again into foreboding creep groove, jazzy intensity and a feel like being transported to someplace else as (I think?) the keys emulate horns to set up a stretch of electronic low-end beneath the meditative doom drums and second cynical verse — “break through the fourth wall and ‘burn the green room” feels like it’s dropping references — lead to a wobbly weirdo guitar solo emblematic of the manner in which Iron Jinn as a whole is too cohesive to be experimental at least in the we-tried-a-thing-and-recorded-it sense, but remains deep in its exploratory sensibility, notably in the guitars and synth, which makes it fortunate that Bielderman and Hogenelst are there to provide a grounding presence.
I haven’t seen a tracklisting for the 2LP version, and perhaps unsurprisingly for something with so much flux and fluidity, there are multiple ways it can be parsed, whether it’s the first three songs on side A or just the pairing of the seven-minutes-each “Winding World” and “Soft Healers,” which on their own do a lot of the necessary scene-setting for what follows, even as “Ego Loka” offers reinforcement of their vaporous motives. Stylistically, Iron Jinn is much the same, and whether one wants to approach it as a work of dark prog, heavy psychedelia edging on the stratospheric, a new branch on the cultish family tree of The Devil’s Blood or the something-else that it ultimately is, what you put into listening is what you’re going to get out. “Truth is Your Dagger” picks up to establish new momentum coming out of “Ego Loka,” unfurling its somehow-drifting angularity on either side of a midsection break held together by Hogenelst that leads into a surge topped by a triumphant delivery of the title-line by Kemkens and Beydals in unison; the encouragement to break out of one’s own conceptions that the concluding lyric “stab your truth” seems to be — and fair enough — the ethic seems to be conveyed by the example of the music itself as much as the words. Whatever else Iron Jinn might be at this point and however one might want to categorize this initial offering, it is markedly individual.
That is to say, if you want to sit with it and parse out where centerpiece “Lick It or Kick It” — lyric video premiering below; the single’s been out for a week or so — comes by its grim ambience, vague threat and theatricality (also glockenspiel, maybe), controlled bombast and abiding tension that seems unreleased even through the fuzzed payoff it gets, amplifier hum carrying into the willful play on Devin Townsend doing ’60s psych that “Relic” posits itself as being, you can do that. I won’t say you’re wrong, and the rewards of closer listening throughout Iron Jinn‘s Iron Jinn are abundant, from the arrangements of synth to the manner in which the guitars work off each other from the outset on, to the subtle energetic push of the vocals coming together and the tent of Weird under which the entire cosmic circus is held, to the chiming notes in “Bread and Games” that seems to push as far into amorphousness as they’ll go until the aforementioned drone epilogue of “Cage Rage” still to come, viewing the world around them with due terror and refusing to capitulate to the demands of genre. But whether you’re with them or not, Iron Jinn are going to that place right where the brain meets the stem, the moment right before you’re actually asleep when you have that last conscious thought, whatever it might be. They’ll take you if you’re willing to go, and I’d bet that if you asked, they already know not everyone is going to be willing.
As “Bread and Games” gives over not-quite-patiently to the here-we-go spacey intro of “Blood Moon Horizon,” and the eventual breakout that everything seems to have been moving toward that’s still preface to the linear build across the first six-plus minutes of “Cage Rage” — a fitting title to encapsulate the jaw-clenching tension throughout — the real accomplishment of Iron Jinn becomes somewhat clearer. The reason it works is because none of the four-piece are playing against each other. Beydals and Kemkens, Hogenelst and Bielderman, drawn together by the smoothness in the production sound by Sebastiaan van Bijlevelt — let alone the scope of the mix — are united in their purpose. Even when Hogenelst sits out “Ego Loka” and “Bread and Games,” and even in the comings and goings around that long final contemplation, the impression is that Iron Jinn are trying this thing and following where it has led them. You wouldn’t be wrong to say it’s a record born out of and for strange times, but the ambition here is even broader than the hour-long stretch of the 2LP. They sound like a band frustrated with conceptions of style driving themselves to create something new, like a sculptor whose medium just happens to be fog, or the first chapter of a book the plot of which is only starting to reveal itself.
Maybe that’s the case, and if so, I won’t predict where Iron Jinn are headed in terms of sound, or why, or how long it might take them to get there, if ‘there’ is even an endgame and the goal is not the going in the first place. What I’ll say instead is that I hope they keep moving. In following Beydals‘ work over the last decade, as a player and songwriter he seems to have been a reluctant focal point, searching for an outlet wherein his expressive intent can flourish, untethered. And it could well be that Iron Jinn, that the creative partnership with Kemkens is the vehicle through which that will happen, but it will be years more before we know, and in a universe of infinite possibility the band could break up before the record’s even out and an asteroid could smash into the ocean and set all the oxygen in Earth’s air on fire, so no, no speculation. But there’s potential and promise at this point, and Iron Jinn builds on past successes — by no means just for Beydals — while carving out their own path, not with arrogance, but with artistic certainty and an awareness of and (if understated) excitement for what they might yet achieve.
In addition to the Roadburn release show, Iron Jinn have slots lined up at Desertfest London, Sonic Whip, Bridge Festival and Void Fest, as well as club dates and gigs supporting and performing with the venerable Alain Johannes in September. You’ll find those dates, the preorder link, and more info under the premiere of the “Lick It or Kick It” lyric video below, courtesy of the PR wire.
Hope you enjoy:
Iron Jinn, “Lick it or Kick It” lyric video
The third song from our upcoming debut album, preorder the record at https://www.stickman-records.com/shop/iron-jinn-iron-jinn/
Iron Jinn are Oeds Beydals (The Devils Blood/Molassess/Death Alley), Wout Kemkens (Shaking Godspeed/De Niemanders), Bob Hogenelst (Birth of Joy/Molassess) and Gerben Bielderman (Pauw).
‘Iron Jinn’ tracklisting
1. Winding World
2. Soft Healers
3. Ego Loka
4. Truth Is Your Dagger
5. Lick It Or Kick it
6. Relic
7. Bread And Games
8. Blood Moon Horizon
9. Cage Rage
Credits
Written by Iron Jinn
Recorded and mixed at Galloway Studio by Sebastiaan van Bijlevelt
Mastered by Pieter Kloos
Video concept and styling Louise Te Poele
Camera, animation and editing Daan van der Pluijm
Handwriting by William van Giessen
Released by Stickman Records
The release party takes place at Roadburn Festival Saturday April 22nd. Other shows we can announce at this point are:
14.04.2023 – Live At The Farm, Varsseveld Gelders Goed
05.05.2023 – London (UK), Desertfest London
06.05.2023 – Nijmegen (NL), Sonic Whip
12.05.2023 – Eindhoven (NL), Bridge Festival Eindhoven
27.05.2023 – Den Haag (NL), Sniester
12.08.2023 – Void Fest, Waldmünchen (DE)
08.09.2023 – Zwolle – Hedon Zwolle w/ Alain Johannes
09.09.2023 – Leiden – Gebr de Nobel w/ Alain Johannes
10.09.2023 10.09.2023 – Heerlen – @de nieuwe nor w/ Alain Johannes
Iron Jinn are:
Oeds Beydals
Gerben Bielderman
Bob Holgenelst
Wout Kemkens
