Nebula

Lock and load your ear goggles and set the controls for the centre of your soul. Meteorcity has a treat for fans of the Stooges, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath and, of course, Fu Manchu. It's been about five years since guitarist Eddie Glass and drummer Ruben Romano split from "stoner" rockers Fu Manchu. However, Dos EPs captures them in the very early days of Nebula with another former Fu member, Mark Abshire, on bass, and combines two previously released EPs with three new tracks. During their first U.S. tour in the summer of 1988, Nebula stopped and recorded about ten songs in both New York and Seattle. Half of those tracks found their way onto the Sun Creature EP on the now-defunct Man's Ruin label, while the other half ended up on a split with Lowrider on Meteorcity. The three new tracks that open the disc are straight-ahead blues rockers, while the older numbers stretch out a little more, inviting you into psychedelic space jams punctuated by gargantua-sized riffs. Some tracks, like "Fall Of Icarus," are almost indistinguishable from In Search Of...-era Fu Manchu, using the familiar template of simple monster riffs combined with semi-monotone hollered vocals. Thankfully, Nebula has mastered the dynamics that early Fu cried out for. As Fu Manchu drifts away from the fuzz and starts flirting with hints of pop/punk, Nebula have stayed truer to the spirit of "acid rock," and the three-and-a-half-year bridge created by Dos EPs illustrates that perfectly. Nebula stands head and shoulders above most of the pretenders in the stoner/desert/anti-classic rock genre.