JINJER bassist Eugene Abdukhanov talks about money for touring musicians
24-02-2025
In a new interview with Germany’s Moshpit Passion, bassist Eugene Abdukhanov of Ukrainian metallers JINJER spoke about how touring has become increasingly challenging and increasingly expensive to navigate, particularly in light of the fact that many venues require bands to pay them a percentage of their merchandise sales. He said: ”It’s hard to find the proper words, and not to swear… I, of course, oppose and I deeply hate the whole idea of basically stealing money from bands, especially when venues have bars and make tons of money on booze. And especially cutting merch money from support bands who very often barely make any money on merch itself, and they don’t have anything else. And at the same time, I understand that there is no way out of the situation. Because of the whole system, how everything is made, everything turned upside down.”
He continued: “Musicians, from being at the very top of the pyramid, like artists, actually everything’s supposed to work for musicians, they turn to be at the very bottom of the pyramid. Because the musicians are working for everybody else. This is how it is done. It turns out that the musicians are working for management, the musicians are working for labels, the musicians are working for booking companies, promoters. And it’s very, very obvious when you see a settlement, financial settlement of a tour. Because you start from there, and you see the money and then you see all the cuts and what you’re left with is incomparable with what was at the beginning.”
Eugene added: “I can complain about this forever. But I see to the core and the core is just the world we live in. This is how everything works and everything is turning. So once open market and free capitalistic society turned into a deeply monopolized market where everything belongs to certain entities which control the majority of the market. I will not say names. This is definitely bad. But I just don’t see a solution.”
JINJER released its fifth studio album, “Duél”, on February 7 via Napalm Records. The LP sees JINJER continuing its long-lasting collaboration with accomplished producer Max Morton, who co-produced, mixed and mastered the album. Last month the band released the fifth single and title track “Duél”.
Watch “Duél” below.
Eugene Abdukhanov, JINJER bassist on the new album:
“First of all, it‘s hard to believe that we’re about to release our fifth full length album! After all the releases we’ve made, finally having Duél in our hands and ready to be shared with the world, makes us very proud that our band still hasn’t run out of creativity and inspiration. The fact that we still challenge ourselves to release the best music we have ever made with each new release, is what keeps JINJER moving forward. This upcoming album was the longest songwriting process we’ve ever had and it took almost two years to complete. We worked very hard with every free minute we weren’t on tour, recording demos over and over again and always searching for the perfect sound for guitars, bass and drums. It was also the first time that Tatiana did vocal pre-productions, so it’s safe to say that none of our releases were so well thought out and calculated as this one. It pulverizes the boundaries of the modern progressive metal genre but still remains sophisticated, exciting and extreme all at the same time. We took up the challenge to expand our musical horizons even wider than before in order to cement Duél to be the next step in JINJER‘s musical growth and hopefully the evolution of metal music in general.”
Watch the previously released “Green Serpent”, “Rogue”, “Kafka” and ‘Someone’s Daughter’ below.
During an appearance on a recent episode of Knotfest‘s “She’s With The Band”, JINJER vocalist Tatiana Shmailyuk spoke about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band’s new LP. Tatiana said: “My purpose is just to write lyrics and sing them. I’m so behind right now with the writing lyrics. And I warned my guys. We were at least to get a really rough draft, rough sketch or a demo of one song, like maybe first single from the new album, at least get this, but nope. [Stress and creativity don’t] work with me. Well, but when the deadline’s coming, and everybody knows that — I’ve been talking, like, every single time we release a new album, I say that, I say this — deadlines push me. So I just have to write, so I get this stream of consciousness, basically. I write down whatever the bullshit is in my head. And then you build it. At least you have to have bricks to build a poem or whatever it is, just lyrics.”
Regarding the musical direction of the new JINJER material, Tatiana said: “It’s gonna be different, first of all, because I feel that the music differs a lot. And to my mind, the whole — I won’t say how many songs are there; I guess 12 or even 15; let’s say 13; I don’t remember — but they all have… not all of them, but half of them, at least, they have a similarity in them. They’re similar to each other or they remind me. They have this concept within — without any lyrics, they still sound like they belong to one box. They are a set of songs. And I already think about all the… I’m not even thinking about like the lyrics — I think about the topics and stuff, but I think about the booklet or the cover or even the music videos and what I’m gonna wear there. And it has a certain flavor to me that… I feel like it has this flavor of 19th century. It’s very romanticism from the 19th century. If you listen to it, you will think, ‘Oh.’ You know, when you listen to MUSE, you feel he was inspired by a lot of classical composers — obviously. So our new music has this flavor. And I’m so excited.”
JINJER released its first official live DVD/Blu-ray, “Live In Los Angeles”, on May 17 via Napalm Records. Recorded and filmed on December 22, 2022 at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, this offering is intended to celebrate not only getting through the last few years in one piece, but also the band’s 15-year career.
“Live In Los Angeles” was a spontaneous decision by the band, recorded as raw as possible, to emphasize the passion that can come from a live show. This release is an explosive mixture of JINJER‘s discography — featuring fan favorites like “Sit Stay Roll Over”, “Home Back” and the game-changing “Pisces”. The live album contains 16 songs in various audio formats, with some strictly limited: the deluxe digipack features not only a DVD, but also two more songs, “Wallflower” and “Disclosure!”, recorded in Paris in 2023.
JINJER is:
Tatiana Shmayluk – Vocals
Roman Ibramkhalilov – Guitars
Eugene Abdukhanov – Bass
Vlad Ulasevich – Drums
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