Up in smoke

>> Nebula: between rock and a stoned place

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Fans of stoner rock are, well, a special breed. The knuckle-draggin', monosyllabic fans of this riff-heavy music are pretty much everything you would think they are. They have a penchant for muscle cars, they can carve a bong out of any piece of fruit, they work at gas stations, live in their parents' basements, like to smoke so much chronic they can be blindfolded with dental floss and prefer their tunes loud and heavy.

Nebula's singer/guitarist Eddie Glass could be considered a blue blood of stoner rock. Having once been a member of Fu Manchu, Glass went even heavier when he formed Nebula, bent on sludgy riffs but with more of a trippy, psychedelic leaning than his previous cohorts. Glass realizes that now that the smoke is clearing a bit on this stoner thing, people may once again just think of them as simply a rock band. "I think they could've come up with a better name than 'stoner rock,' but other than that, I really don't think about it that much. What they deem 'stoner rock' now is kind of this heavy metal thing and we're not really from that camp. When we did our first record that term wasn't even around yet. If we knew that stoner thing was going to happen we wouldn't have called it Let It Burn."

Okay, so Nebula hates the tag, but Glass has to confess that there is still a little bit of stoner behind the rock. "I have to admit that I do like getting high, but it's not like I can't play my guitar or write songs unless I'm stoned. People think that we're all major potheads but the fact of the matter is I'm way more into alcohol, Vicadan, morphine and codeine."

With the Cherry Valence and Hacksaw at Foufounes Électriques on Monday, June 4, 8pm, $8