Kobra and the Lotus –The Boston Music Room, London, 2nd July 2015

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Review and photo credit: Robert Sutton (Contributor / Photographer / Writer)

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Kobra and the Lotus (KATL) are a Canadian heavy metal band and were formed in 2009. They are led by their songwriter and vocalist Kobra Paige with Jasio Kulakowski on lead guitar and Brad Kennedy on Bass making up the more stable players in the group and for this tour Adam Brown was on drums and Bill Hudson was their guest guitar player.

They have just finished an eleven date UK tour, which was briefly interrupted for their appearance at the Grasspop festival in Belgium. Support for the night was from Dethonater and Neuronspoiler.

Dethonator

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Dethonator are a four piece band comprising of Tristan (vocals and guitar), Henry (guitar and vocals), Adam (bass) and John (drums) and have been playing since 2009. They play what I would describe as ‘good ol fashioned’ heavy metal with hard hitting riffs. They opened up the night with a great set and I personally think that they are getting better every time I see them, so keep up the great work guys.

Neuronspoiler

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Neuronspoiler are a five piece band with their members coming from four different countries who play classic heavy metal. However, tonight they were a man down so had only one guitar rather than the usual two. The band tonight comprised of JR (vocals), David del Cid (guitar), Erick Tekilla (bass) and Tom Ashcroft (drums). (Paul Sundt (guitar) was the man missing from the performance tonight). They played a great set and really bought the crowd alive especially when they played a cover of the classic Dio song ‘Holy Diver’. They have a great heavy metal sound with the heavy riffs and the screaming guitar, but I did find that the screaming guitar on each song was a little over the top and could have easily done without so much of it…my only criticism of an otherwise super setlist.

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Kobra and The Lotus

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I have seen Kobra and the Lotus several times before and the last was only eight months ago, so I am quite impressed for a Canadian band to come over and be playing the UK this often. I did however think that the UK audience might have appreciated this fact a little more as the attendance at the event was a little lower than I had expected. The group who have two main albums to their name didn’t have any new material as such to play for us, but they are due to release a new covers EP shortly.

The band opened up the night’s performance with ‘High Priestess’ a high impact title track from their 2014 album. This set the bar pretty high for an opening track and we weren’t to be disappointed when they then followed this with ‘Welcome to my Funeral’ from their self tiled 2012 album. They played a set comprising of eleven songs from both their albums and the cover ‘Sign of the Gypsy Queen’ from the new EP. The encore comprised of two tracks, ‘Heartbeat’ from High Priestess and ‘Fifty Shades of Evil’ from the first album. Overall their performance was probably the best I have seen KATL and their guest performers certainly looked more like ‘old hands’ in the band and fitted into the line up very well. My only slight personal disappointment was that they didn’t play ‘No Rest For The Wicked’ but this really didn’t matter too much as the rest of the setlist was excellent.

Their new, and first ever, EP ‘Words of the Prophets’ comprising of five tracks is due for release in August.