Kobra and the Lotus

Live at the 1720

Downtown Los Angeles, CA

May 27th, 2018

Review and photos by Travis Baumann

Kobra and the Lotus are a heavy metal band out of Calgary Canada. They are based around the formidable voice of Kobra Paige and her uplifting, strong vocals and lyrics push them solidly within the power metal sub-genre.

Kobra and the Lotus just released the second half of their two part album series "Prevail" and come to Los Angeles almost a year to the date of their last performance here to grace us with new material and play a number of favorites from the first chapter of "Prevail" as well.  

Kobra is joined on stage by Jasio Kulakowski on lead guitar, Ronny Gutierrez also on guitar, Brad Kennedy on bass guitar and Lord Marcus Lee on drums. In addition to handling the stringed instruments, the three men also sing back up vocals and a good share of the songs.

They started off the set with the first single from "Prevail II", "Losing My Humanity". Kobra's charisma is palpable from the stage as she stands on a riser above the audience's heads, her voice strong and clear.

"Trigger Pulse" from "Prevail I" was a crowd favorite and many of the fans up front sang along with Kobra and crew. They did two more from the first "Prevail" volume with the excellent "Specimen X (The Mortal Chamber)" which was my favorite song of the set, and the ballad, "Light Me Up".

The band focused on new material from "Prevail II" for the next few songs with "Let Me Love You" followed by "Human Empire" and "My Immortal". I have not had enough time with the new album to sing along to all of these but all of the songs sounded great live.

They returned to the first "Prevail" release for another of their singles, "You Don't Know" which had a strong reaction from the crowd as it is one of the featured music videos from the band and the audience was thoroughly familiar with it.

They finished up the set with two more new songs with "Velvet Roses" and the Fleetwood Mac cover, "The Chain". It was a great show, albeit too short as I would have loved a few more from "Prevail I" such as "Gotham" or "Manifest Destiny" not to mention some songs from the "High Priestess" album, but as they were the supporting act for heavy metal oddities, Texas Hippie Coalition, they did not have the luxury of encores or extended sets. I am really looking forward to them returning and doing a headlining or at least co-headlining tour as we just did not get enough of Kobra and the Lotus.

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