Perhaps this is a throwback to the heyday of the Seattle sound or the result of three guys who just like playing the devil’s music. Unfortunately, Charged doesn’t quite live up to its name, and Nebula’s live sound and presence is missed on this album. But the idea is still there, as well as the intention of making music your mom would make you turn down.

Fuzzed out guitars and a deep, omnipresent bass constitute the band’s sound. With Black Sabbath riffs, Nebula simply continues the ever-needed, but slowly diminishing cry for traditional rock. But despite its homage to the actual phenomenon of hard rock, they’re only creating a sound that was revolutionized twenty years ago and refined in the last 10. It is what we now know as “grunge.”

What saves Nebula from the doldrums is its incredibly timed solos that are beautifully pretentious and wonderfully unnecessary. Still, its sense of fury is lost on the recording. The full-bodied power of Nebula’s live show cannot be presented through a stereo. Even closing your eyes real tight and pretending you’re at a show still does it no justice.

Charged is simple; like the concept, the band and the music. One might ask what the purpose of the record is, and it might just be that every now and then, the music world will get another version of a bass, a drum kit and a lot of distortion.
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