Kobra And The Lotus - Out Of The Pit (Album Review)
Monday, 01 November 2010
Written by Ben Bland
The metal scene of today is bursting at the seams with talent. Most of said talent is clearly placed at the experimental end of the metal scale. Bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan and Opeth take the genre of metal and move it on to higher plains. Kobra and the Lotus is a metal band and they are at totally the opposite end of the scale to the aforementioned experimentalists. Does this necessarily make their debut record worthless?
No, of course it doesn’t. For whilst the likes of Opeth may be big fish in the metal pond these days there is still always a place reserved for the classics. Iron Maiden’s new record went to number one in twenty-eight countries worldwide after all. It is to bands like Maiden that Kobra and the Lotus raise the horns and the debut record from these Canadians is just one big tribute to the sound of the eighties; to the extent that they’ve even recruited legendary Maiden producer Kevin Shirley to mix the album. The twin riffing of Chris Swenson and Matt Van Wezel, the galloping basslines of Ben Freud, the wailing vocals of Brittany Paige...wait a second...Brittany Paige, that’s hardly a Bruce Dickinson sort of name is it?
Yes indeed, Kobra and the Lotus do have a female singer but no, this does not make them sound anything less like your stereotypical trad metal band. There are moments during opening track 'I’m Yours' where one would be prepared to swear that it was Rob Halford himself handling lead vocals. Indeed the overwhelming feel of this record is one of music being played by guys in leather jackets with bad haircuts and a penchant for motorbikes. Paige’s vocals certainly don’t do anything to lessen this image. That doesn’t make the songs bad. The two opening numbers are solid blasts of classic heaviness. There’s a focus on melody throughout all of these songs with soloing being tastefully restrained as opposed to the shredding that seems to dominate modern metal. Things never get too fast either. This is a record made to crack a couple of beers open to so that you can headbang without feeling stupid and without waking up with a crick in your neck the next morning. It’s undoubtedly enjoyable upon first listen.
However there is a major problem with this record. With the exception of closer ‘Legend’, which will be dealt with later, everything on this album sounds pretty much the same. Nothing is catchy enough to take flight and become a fully fledged metal anthem. Thus what you end up with is average metal song after average metal song. Even when covering a true classic in Motörhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’, Kobra and the Lotus just turn out another slightly underwhelming track.
Enjoyable though it is the first couple of times, ‘Out of the Pit’ lacks a little in replay value. This is partly because some of the lyrics are cringeworthy, to put it mildly. ‘A Teaspoon of Metal’ has a chorus too awful to repeat here. Whilst I’m sure, or at least I hope I’m sure, that some of the lyrics on this record are meant to be something of a parody, this doesn’t do anything to alter the fact that they are often annoying and not amusing.
Indeed it is a shame, because the lyrical content is crucial in relegating this album to a lower division. At least if the lyrics trod the well worn path of fantastical tales or generic ‘drink beer and mosh your heart out’ themes then they would be easy to ignore, but when they are as truly terrible as those on display here it is sadly much harder to overlook.
Don’t despair though, metal fans, because this band clearly does have a smidgen of promise. ‘Legend’ shows more than the odd hint of a band that has the potential. The hushed acoustic intro is reminiscent of eighties Metallica at their more progressive and the song also offers Paige her first real chance to impress as a singer beyond doing a bloody good impersonation of the male greats of the genre. Maybe in the future Kobra and the Lotus could try and do things with a bit more of the epic and a little less of the embarrassing. We can but hope.
Stereoboard Album Rating: 4/10
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Yes indeed, Kobra and the Lotus do have a female singer but no, this does not make them sound anything less like your stereotypical trad metal band. There are moments during opening track 'I’m Yours' where one would be prepared to swear that it was Rob Halford himself handling lead vocals. Indeed the overwhelming feel of this record is one of music being played by guys in leather jackets with bad haircuts and a penchant for motorbikes. Paige’s vocals certainly don’t do anything to lessen this image. That doesn’t make the songs bad. The two opening numbers are solid blasts of classic heaviness. There’s a focus on melody throughout all of these songs with soloing being tastefully restrained as opposed to the shredding that seems to dominate modern metal. Things never get too fast either. This is a record made to crack a couple of beers open to so that you can headbang without feeling stupid and without waking up with a crick in your neck the next morning. It’s undoubtedly enjoyable upon first listen.
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