Jinjer’s Tatiana Shmayluk named the metal vocalist she originally wanted to sound like when she first started out — and it’s not a woman.
Speaking with Metal Hammer, Shmayluk expressed her dismay when she was asked about Jinjer being referred to as a “female-fronted band,” especially when they have little in common with some of the groups they get lumped in with sonically.
“We are still getting compared to artists that have nothing to do with us. And not always good or talented artists and I feel very, very fucking offended by that,” Shmayluk asserted.
“Because some people, they cannot sing, they don’t hit the notes! Then I get people saying, ‘Oh, she’s doing better than you, she does it better than you, she has this personality, she has…’ Oh my god! Leave me alone! That kind of stuff really pisses me off.”
The vocalist revealed that when she first started making music, she wanted to emulate Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, not a woman. She claims that she’s often compared to former Arch Enemy singers Angela Gossow and Alissa White-Gluz.
“I never wanted to sound like [Gossow]. Some people told me, ‘Why don’t you color your hair? Why don’t you dye your hair blue like Alissa?’ But why would I? I don’t get it,” Shmayluk continued.
How Did Tatiana Shmayluk Learn to Scream?
During an episode of our How I Learned to Scream series, Shmayluk recalled the first time she heard a woman with extreme vocals — Otep Shamaya — although she initially thought it was a man’s voice she’d heard.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god I like this dude’s attitude’ and my friend was like, ‘No Tati, it’s a girl.’ I was like, ‘Are you serious?'” she said. “I was like, ‘Yeah that’s what I want to do.'”
Discovering Otep led Shmayluk to find other metal artists with extreme vocals and she eventually decided to attempt them herself. The first song she practiced was Mudvayne’s “Dig” and admitted she was disappointed in how she sounded at first.
READ MORE: 10 Vocalists Who Sound Like Classic Movie Monsters + Villains
“You sometimes can tell that it’s a woman screaming and that’s what I didn’t want to hear about myself. I tried to imitate a more male version of screaming and growling,” she admitted.
Once she started practicing the vocal technique with her pre-Jinjer bands, she found her sound.
Check out the interview below and see which Jinjer song made our Best Metal Songs of the Last 25 Years list below that.
How Jinjer’s Tatiana Shmayluk Learned to Scream
The 25 Best Metal Songs of the Last 25 Years (2000-2024)
So much metal, so many subgenres, but these songs stood out above the crowd in furthering heavy music over the last 25 years.
Contributions by Jordan Blum (JB), Chad Childers (CC), Joe DiVita (JD), John Hill (JH) and Lauryn Schaffner (LS).
Gallery Credit: Loudwire Staff
