Nebula was formed in Los Angeles, California in 1997, when guitarist Eddie Glass and drummer Ruben Romano formed Nebula after breaking away from desert rock pioneers Fu Manchu, eventually recruiting bassist Mark Abshire. The band quickly established itself with a sound that specialized in feedback-drenched heavy rock, incorporating liberal doses of Black Sabbath riffery, psychedelia, and space rock. Drawing on influences that ranged from Jimi Hendrix, MC5, Stooges, Pink Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators, Black Flag and Mudhoney , the trio recorded its earliest material at Rancho De La Luna before signing to Tee Pee Records for a debut EP in 1998, and immediately became known as a relentless touring act.
The band's breakthrough came as it moved from EPs into full-length records, releasing 1999's To the Center and 2001's Charged on Seattle's storied Sub Pop label, home to Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney. These albums cemented Nebula's reputation as, in the words of one reviewer, a "hard-working power trio [that] sounds like it has been hanging out in the garage since 1973, blissfully unaware of the changing world outside. Which is definitely to its benefit." The band's lineup shifted in the early 2000s when Abshire remained with the band until the recording of Atomic Ritual (2003), which was produced by Chris Goss of Kyuss fame , after which Dennis Wilson and Simon Moon (Eddie Glass) stepped in as bassists until a more permanent replacement was found in Tom Davies , who crossed over from England in the summer of 2004 to join the band.
Across its original run, Nebula continued to release records at a steady clip, including Apollo in 2006 and Heavy Psych in 2009 , while cycling through several drummers after Romano's departure, including Rob Oswald, Adam Kriney, and Jimmy Sweet. The band toured relentlessly through the 2000s, sharing stages with acts like Clutch and Mastodon, and built a devoted international following, particularly in Europe. In 2010 the group entered what became a lengthy hiatus, though as fans and archivists noted at the time, Nebula had been on indefinite hiatus since early 2010 but had not broken up. True to that sentiment, Nebula reformed in 2017 with guitarist Eddie Glass as the sole constant, eventually releasing Holy Shit in 2019 and a seventh studio album, Transmission From Mothership Earth, in July 2022 , which one outlet praised as an album that " feels more conceptual, with a high level of focus on tying the songs together with a single galactic thread ." Decades after its formation, the band remains active and respected as one of the architects of the stoner and space rock revival that grew out of the Southern California desert rock scene, its early Sub Pop-era records still cited as genre touchstones.
Nebula is one of the acts preserved in the Wayne Dennon concert photography archive, where 17 photographs document a performance Wayne captured in 2004, the same year bassist Tom Davies joined the band's touring lineup. Those images, viewed 13,057 times by archive visitors, stand as a small but lasting record of the band's relentless road years, a fitting tribute within a site dedicated to preserving the fleeting energy of live music that Wayne Dennon spent his career capturing.
