It’s been a year since Iron Jinn broke the door down with a mighty tank, unleashing their sole self-titled debut album, released on the Stickman label. It has that chaotic nightmare and the powerful force which came from the realms of The Devil’s Blood, Shaking Godspeed, Birth of Joy, and Pauw. Their debut album was like an atom bomb waiting to explode, and waiting to see the mushroom cloud in all of its glory.
That and their first live album recorded last year on April 22nd at the 013 Tilburg in the Netherlands during the Roadburn Festival, showcases the band performing eight pieces from their debut album. When you listen or watch their performance from start to finish, you are rooting for them as they bring the house down, and giving the festival a brutal awakening like you’ve never seen before.
There are elements between Motorpsycho, early Sabbath, Floyd, Ash Ra Tempel, and Aphrodite’s Child during their 666 sessions. The power behind the massive amounts of thunder during ‘Soft Healers’ hits you so hard, you don’t know what will happen next. Audiences are hypnotised and being in awe for lending support to keep those guitar solos, expanding more and more.
‘Blood Moon Horizon’ starts off with this image of what appears to be something straight out of the 1970s British cult classic The Wicker Man. Hogenelst plays his cymbals to give the guitarists a chance to slide down into the whirlpool of terror that Oeds Beydals and Wout Kemkens travel deep into for some tribal techniques that Bob envisions the changing of the guard in Jinn’s sound.
The lightning from the performance, changes from a blue atmosphere to this deep, dark red setting with flashing lights blaring out of nowhere as they head into a chorus revealing the blood, red moon in all of its glory. Not only it has that post-punk attitude they walk into for a roller-coaster ride, but tackling in those Mars Volta techniques that are out of the blue for its climatic run-down.
Chaos erupts from this rumbling arrangement that Wout, Oeds, and Gerben holding up the torch to the late, great Manuel Gottsching, expanding the ‘Amboss’ time machine from Ash Ra Tempel’s first album by taking a spaced-out voyage that becomes a hallucinating nightmare by travelling into a sludge-like assault that hits your stomach with a hard-core punch!
“Good evening, Roadburn”, Oeds says on the mic with a warm reception as audiences raise their fists and beers to tackle more nightmares to come for the ‘Ego Loka’ to appear from the skyline. Guitars take this middle-eastern hypnotic texture with the lighting changes once more in different colours at the 013 Tilburg to make it even more trippy.
‘Lick It or Kick It’ sees Jarno really pushing the envelope to wind the band-up with this whirling synthesised drone as Iron Jinn channel the Crimson motif and some of the Canterbury structures with a dooming effect. Not only that, but the music portrays the maddening soul of Kathleen Byron’s character of Sister Ruth from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 classic, Black Narcissus.
Everything becomes a thumping groove Bob plays on the hi-hat and hitting the bass drum pedal twice. Audiences shout and scream to see Jinn adding more fuel to the fire with the white lights, spreading like crazy and shrieking into the unknown, even more in the 16-minute improvisation, ‘Winding World’.
Bob is very much like a jazz drummer, keeping up the pace, and keeping up with the time changes, channeling the minds of Bill Ward, Bill Bruford, and Elvin Jones from his Love Supreme days. He’s very much a conductor, making sure the band goes in various time signatures which is evidential in the spooky prog-tastic nod to French maestros Ange, King Crimson’s ‘The Sailor’s Tale’, and Steven Wilson’s Grace for Drowning-era on ‘Truth Is Your Dagger’.
If you think the show’s over, think again. Audiences are wanting more from them as they tackle two more compositions, closing out their set at Roadburn with the eerie, spaghetti-western psychedelia showdown for the hellish choir to resurrect with ‘Bread and Games’ and Gerben’s bass turning into a galloping, cannibalistic beast unleashing hell at Roadburn with ‘Cage Rage’.
With a shout of “Thank you Roadburn!” it’s a job well done for Iron Jinn to bring out the heavy ammunition at the festival. Can we expect more in the years to come and see what adventures will be for them? We may never know.
