When I look back at my time as a student in Houston Community College, and discovering bands beyond the prog genre from jazz fusion, symphonic metal, and hard rock, some of the best bands and artists that I discovered throughout the years was from the Netherlands. Kayak, Supersister, Trace, Within Temptation, Charlotte Wessels (Delain), and Ayreon.
It’s quite an intriguing taste to see how these six were bringing in the big guns and proving how much they can take the prog genre up a notch and give it that mighty giant push that it deserves. And as Oliver Sacks once said, “Music is a fundamental way of expressing or humanity – and it is often our best medicine.”
Well, the medicine itself just got even bigger with this incredible quartet coming out of Arnhem. And that band is Iron Jinn. Their sound has a defiance of insanity, intense arrangements, sinister overtones, and right down to the bone. The band considers members from The Devil’s Blood, Death Alley, Shaking Godspeed, and Birth of Joy.
Originally as a collaborated project, premiering at the Roadburn Festival five years ago, Iron Jinn is like a massive cannon blast, waiting to explode at the right place, at the right time. Their sole self-titled debut is like an alternate soundtrack of Kathleen Byron’s volcanic performance as the unstable Sister Ruth in the 1947 classic, Black Narcissus.
There’s a take-no-prisoners attitude that the four piece have inside their blood and veins. When you hear a track like ‘Lick It or Kick It’, we get a sense of being place inside a mental ward where the crazy people have taken over the asylum.
You have a glimpse of a doomy ‘60s garage rock sound, combining the Mass in F Minor years of The Electric Prunes teaming up with The Cure, BigElf, and the THRAK-era of King Crimson, bring in a terrorising response between psychedelia, stoner metal, and futuristic tribal rock rolled into one. And this ain’t your typical proggy release, this is an attack on all of the senses.
At first when I heard ‘Relic’, it sounded like a foot stomping glam rock response to Alice Cooper’s ‘Under My Wheels’ and Kayak’s ‘We Are Not Amused’ for the first two minutes and seventeen seconds. But then it shifts gears as Jinn enters the dreamy staircases of a world going into complete madness.
‘Soft Healers’ is as much a ticking time bomb waiting to explode with brutal guitars, mellotron, and frets bending like a motherfucker while ‘Ego Loka’ returns to the Crimson pond with a gothic atmosphere, making it as a semi-sequel to the two parter, ‘Inner Garden’.
The 15-minute closer entitled ‘Cage Rage’ is as hypnotic as a trance vibration waiting to be unleashed. You feel as if you’re inside a dream. There’s the noir-like arrangements, chanting vocalisations, bass guitars going up the metallic rise, and tsunami drum work before the last eight minutes become a droning meditation over the aftermath that’s occurred throughout the entire story.
Iron Jinn’s music may not be everyone’s cup of tea per se, but don’t you fret. It’ll take a while to get into. Their debut is as exhilarating as the eye can see. The production levels itself are out of this world, and having this incredible style that’ll make you want to dig out your old Rune Grammofon releases right about now.
