Nebula: To The Center

Buckcherry's arrival earlier this year helped signal a widely hyped rebirth of rock that rocks, a triumph of mile-high amps and hedonistic showmanship over alt-rock's nebbishy displays of emotional pain and self-loathing. But while the band's odes to sex and drugs explicitly recall the days of the most flamboyant '80s raunch, others try harder and dig deeper, mining the powerhouse riffs and power on which the best hard-rock is built. Too often dismissed as "stoner-rock," the likes of Monster Magnet and Nebula (an L.A.-based spin-off from the marvelous, similarly inclined Fu Manchu) offer the best of both rock worlds: The music is fun-loving, heavy, and wide-open, yet it avoids the preening cock-rock swagger that made so many fans grow tired of this stuff in the first place. Nebula's first full-length album, To The Center, is a foolproof collection of good-natured metal thunder, mixing black-lit psychedelia with booming riffage, urgently simplistic lyrics that don't pander, and ham-fisted touches like hand-claps, solos, and, at the end of the seven-minute "Freedom," a sitar. Nebula represents one of the best opportunities out there to have it both ways: Songs like the sensational "Between Time" provide a beautifully pure, undiluted, liberating rock experience, without having to deal with arena crowds, smirking irony, or dopes in mosh pits. What could be better