We first encountered The Nebulosity when Gary saw them in a recent Metal To The Masses round at Ivory Blacks. Not a band he’d heard of before and the same for me, Gary was regardless impressed with their eclectic mix of styles.
When we decided to run them as a Band of the Day, I opted to do it as Gary had had the pleasure of their music before. So off I went to Bandcamp to listen to their 2015 release C. My first impression was “eek”, as a couple of the tracks are well over ten minutes. “This’ll be a bit proggy”, I thought. Then I saw the majority of other tracks weighing into the more lightweight category of 2-3 minutes each. OK. Different.
I’ll get on to the album shortly, but a few brief words about the band first. They’re from Falkirk and have been around since 2012. There seems to be some kind of rule that all members must have a name beginning with “A” as they have two Adams, an Alan and an Alex. They self-pigeon hole as “Progressive/Psychedelic Space-Metal” so they’re probably a bit weird, too. Not that there is anything wrong with being weird.
They cite their major influence as being “the universe” and sing songs about “the cyclical nature of the world we live in and experience everyday and the ones we live in but don’t.” So, erm, yeah.
Those songs, then. “Rain” was one that they played at the M2TM competition and it clocks at 11:53, the longest on the album. It does start of somewhat discordantly, but settles down into more of a stoner/grunge groove which I really enjoyed. “Cosmonaut” is a more regular length and a Black Sabbath influence is immediately apparent in the opening riffs, but it goes on to be something a little more upbeat while retaining that 1970’s doom feel.
“Caffeine” begins like someone’s brain who’s not had their morning shot yet: downtuned and sludgy. Once the lyrics kick in, it’s more of an alt-metal sound from the days when alternative was a good thing (Alice in Chains, et al).
Without going through each track, C is a collection of generally doomy-sludgy-crusty-prog songs with a bit of groove and stoner mixed in. The band themselves have a sound that harks back to when the universe was the bit more mysterious than it is now with all our new-fangled telescopes and string theory being mentioned on sit-coms. Mainly, though, it’s heavy.
I confess that I didn’t expect to like C too much when I first looked at it, but even after the first listen I was appreciating it. A lot.
Given that The Nebulosity didn’t make it through that M2tM heat, it says a hell of a lot for the quality of the bands who did, if this is what they were up against.
The Nebulosity: facebook | twitter | youtube | bandcamp | spotify
