Russia’s Gloosh Pack Menacing Black Metal On Frantic, Thrilling New Album

Russia’s Gloosh, which appears to be a one-man project of George Gabrielyan, holds absolutely nothing back on their new album Timewheel, which is available now. The music feels both vicious and epic, like the songs are dragging listeners through a rock-filled, volatile swamp and also presenting them with a cosmic and even psychedelically disorienting “new world.”

The often relentless, beastly blast beat barrages feel like they’re tearing into listeners like a vicious animal, but the incredibly fittingly tuned, bombastic riffing streaking through the mix feels like it turns that ferocity onto something grand and metaphysical like the structure of time itself. To take a cue from the album title, it’s like a hefty wheel is shredding through the fabric of time. To bring the experience a bit more down to earth in a definitive sense, listening to Timewheel feels like getting forced to contemplate the limits of traditional understandings of ourselves and our social reality because of how simultaneously devastating and huge that this music gets. Turning towards the great beyond, there’s a tidal wave of chaos that we may like to forget but which comes through here loud and clear.

In this immersively intense experience, brutality and hugeness both come through with abundant clarity. Ripping guitar melodies fairly consistently course through the avalanche of blast beats that feel a bit like reaching for the heavens, in a sense. They’re big and bold and feel like they’re pulling the whole creation, blast beat intensity and all, towards some kind of higher, psychedelically upending metaphysical plane. They establish a clear melodic progression amidst the grueling chaos.

The melodies streaking through the blast beats feel like they’ve got a slightly harder edge by track two. Overall, this album’s journey feels consistently brutally epic, like the sonic encapsulation of metaphysical security getting whisked away. There are some dynamic swings — the grimly swinging melodies do take over from the blast beats sometimes. For example, track three, called “Самсара (Samsara),” gets into a kind of fierce, beastly, animalistic chugging feel for a bit, which feels almost like a fist-pump worthy, subtly triumphant segment. When the melodies do slow down, comparatively speaking at least, the moments end up simply reinforcing the unease, which looms over every element of the album’s experience.

Timewheel feels like it’s the album for the moment of realization that there’s a lot more to our lives than constricting, often self-imposed limits.

5/5 Stars

Check out the music below!