Would you be happy if hard work and talent didn’t define someone’s success? What if you had to play to an algorithm if you wanted to make it big? Introducing The Jins, a band that certainly knows this all too well, with their March album, “It’s All Over.” The Jins are a decade-long three-piece consisting of Ben Larsen on guitar and vocals, Jamie Warnock on drums, and Hudson Partridge on bass—and their success is hard-fought and well-deserved.
“It’s All Over” is the latest and greatest release from The Jins yet—preserving their signature poppy-distorted sound, but heavier, louder, and (if you didn’t know better) more “serious.” After all this is their third album, and the first to break their previous tradition of naming a song after the band (check out Jin Sabbath and Jin Love on their other albums). But to assure long-time fans that they aren’t giving up their goofy charm, the album closes with a poppy, upbeat song about Larsen’s attraction to Edna Krabappel, the fourth-grade teacher from the Simpsons.
Shifting back to the more “serious” side of the album, it comes off as a reflection on how The Jins got to where they are now—a steady climb that skyrocketed with social media’s help. The band blew up on TikTok in 2020 because of Larsen’s strong resemblance to late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, which was only exemplified by both bands featuring erratic dynamics, distorted guitars, and raspy vocals.
But the similarities end there, and any layman could (and should!) listen to both and immediately know they are barely alike. Nirvana’s blend of punk and metal bare little resemblance to The Jins’ brighter, rattling sound. Just look at the third track, “Force a Metamorphosis,” where Larsen laments how the comparison has created a loss of identity: “I’m feeling so fucking out of my head, with this imposter syndrome sinking in.” The band has struggled to escape the ties that helped them when COVID prevented performing, and even by mentioning Nirvana in this article, I have contributed to their
problem.
The Jins aren’t a band that needs to find their own identity; they clearly know who they are. Just look at “She’s the One,” which is a quintessential Jins song: distorted, jangly guitar, Larsen’s gravelly mourning of a lover, the entrance of thunderous, yet controlled drumming by Warnock, and Partridge’s pulsating basslines. Their formula doesn’t grow old, and despite eleven years together, neither do The Jins.
To tie this all together, listen to “86ed,” which I interpret to be about their goal of “making it” as a band. Perhaps the love that has “beaten him into submission” and become “his one and only motivation” is the love of performing. Maybe the “bad decision” that she’s laughing at is leaning into the TikTok fame. After all, it got them much farther as a band, but with a lot of consequences. Or maybe, it is just about a relationship with a cruel, mocking partner. That’s the beauty of The Jins: their #1 goal is to have fun—they even call themselves fun rock—and no one can stop them from having a good time. Listen to
“It’s All Over” out on all streaming platforms now.