By Carl Begai

In mid-2011, Calgary-based KOBRA AND THE LOTUS surprised their fans with the release of a video for the song ‘Welcome To My Funeral’. At the time it was a non-album track, a taste of what was coming down the pipe later in the year with their second official record, Visionary. It was a bold move, particularly since there had been zero build-up to the new record in the press prior to the video release, and shocking in that singer Brittany “Kobra” Paige’s vocal style had evolved even further since the band’s 2010 debut, Out Of The Pit. Everything was ready to go for Visionary right down to the artwork, but the band’s plans were abruptly scuttled when they were offered a deal with Spinefarm / Universal in cooperation with KISS legend Gene Simmons’ label, Simmons Records.

A new game plan was put into play along with a couple line-up changes, and Kobra And The Lotus found themselves back at the drawing board for what would become their self-titled second outing.

“When we signed the new deal the label wanted us to write more material for them to choose from so we could release the strongest album possible,” says Paige. “They also wanted to keep it upbeat, so they cut all the ballads. We wrote a bunch of fast hit-you-in-the-face songs and they picked four to be used with what we already had for Visionary. We actually wrote ‘Forever One’ in the studio, and that was created out of four different demos that the label decided not to use (laughs). It was pretty crazy taking chopped up pieces of songs and realizing we had one really solid song in there. What’s really interesting is how the band has evolved sound-wise on the new album. There are a lot of dual guitar leads, there’s some thrash in there now. Everything is so much bigger now.”

Out Of The Pit isn’t exactly a distant memory and Paige doesn’t take the exposure it gave the band for granted, but she admits the band has left the album behind. Look to their summer festival live sets as proof, which consisted of only new material months before any of it – with the exception of ‘Welcome To My Funeral’ – was released.

“For me personally, this new album was a far more remarkable experience,” Paige admits. “I was heavily involved in the writing process, which meant the songs were written for my range. Out Of The Pit was written as music before vocals without thought of which keys I sing best in. The new songs comparatively had a greater response in the live setting, and the biggest observation has been that they appeal to a much wider range of people. Out Of The Pit seemed to almost be appealing to a niche. I think in the future, however, we would like to re-do and polish up a song like ‘Legend’ and re-release it for fun.”

Exclusive photo by Dirty Quinn Productions

“We focus only on the new material in the live show,” she continues. “It’s the direction we’ve been trying to grow toward from the start and it just takes some living and experiencing to start forming it. To be completely honest, we actually haven’t played anything from Out Of The Pit for over a year now. Once we finished recording the initial version of the new album, none of us wanted to look back. It was refreshing to have new material to play as well, as we wanted to move forward with the evolution of the band. It was driving us crazy because we’ve been playing it, but nobody really knew it until recently.”
“I think the video definitely helped us because it brought out the band’s new sound. Everyone had different opinions about the band’s music when we started, but ‘Welcome To My Funeral’ appealed to a lot more people than we were expecting. Things definitely started to pick up after we released the video, and that song really marked the change in our sound. And, the new music is what got us signed to the label. The debut album wasn’t going to get us signed.”

Kobra And The Lotus earned their new label deal rather than having it handed to them. The band came off from the beginning as a signed act thanks to the amount of promotion and touring they did behind Out Of The Pit even though it was a low key independent release. A large part of that was in-house management (Kobra Music Inc.) devoting 25 hours a day to keeping the in the public eye and on the road as much as possible.

“Management plays a huge part in all of this. First of all we’re artists, so we’re terrible at organization (laughs). We try and plan things out ourselves but we really need help because we’re not good at it. I’m a horrible manager. They won’t even give me the job of tagging my carry-on bag at the airport because I don’t have the head for it; it’s always somewhere else. The management is so critical for us. I find it’s the glue that holds it all together. As long as we have the product we can bring it and we can keep delivering it and giving our best, and management enables us to do that.”

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