Long-haired veterans of the stoner-rock wars, Nebula shaved off their Fu Manchus and turned inward, opting to explore the hazy psychedelic pastures of inner consciousness rather than just sniffing around Kyuss' collective anus for musical inspiration. Guitarist/vocalist/main songwriter Eddie Glass pens burnt-around-the-edges fuzzstompers such as "Do It Now" and "Vulcan Bomber," but he also swims out to the Maharishi-meets-Roky-Erickson sitar and guitar confluence of "Raga in the Bloodshot Pyramid." And though it's true that Nebula's 2001 album, Charged, may not be the experimental masterpiece that the previous album, To The Center, was (and still is), Nebula still maintains all the tools to rock your spine and sizzle your cerebral cortex. Charged has fewer keyboard/sitar/audio generator flourishes than its predecessor, relying more on the rock prowess of an inventive guitar/bass/drum trio.
To paraphrase Waylon Smithers, Charged is the raging yang to To The Center's sober yin. But sometimes you just gotta let your yang flag fly, and when you have the uni-mind rhythm section of drummer Ruben Romano and bassist Mark Abshire to anchor your psilocybin excursions, why not let 'em throw their full, bludgeoning weight into it? Charged deftly represents Nebula's ability to blast free of earth's gravity, but it's what they do when they're free falling in the vastness of space that make Nebula worth experiencing live. The forecast calls for nothing but orange sunshine all around.
