Check Out Lotus Effect’s New Video & New Song, Then See ‘Em Live Tonight

Okay, so I owe a big, big apology on this one, bigger than my usual apologies for my usual slacker-ness.

Way, way, way back in December of last year, I ran into Dre Giles, vocalist for alt-prog-rock dudes {The Lotus Effect} (and a good friend both of SCR and myself), at the now-annual {the last place you look} Christmas show up at Warehouse Live. We chatted and hung out, and he mentioned that TLE were hard at work on a music video, for their badass new tune “Totality”.

It’s the band’s first video since the one for their late-2012 holiday spoof/benefit reggae-rock track “Bad Rudolph” — which I would highly recommend, btw, although not when the kids are around (the video, not the song) — and Dre promised that it would be miles and miles beyond anything the band had done before. He and the band were putting to good use all their theater and film and video production skills, and he swore up and down that it’d be badass.

And y’know what? He wasn’t wrong. Now, “Totality” is a hell of a song to begin with, thoughtful and yearning atop those fiery guitars and stomping rhythms, coming off like what might’ve happened if vintage Far (or maybe Sevendust, actually) would’ve covered a Coheed and Cambria track. It’s technical and gorgeous and epic and roaring, and it’s one of my favorite songs of the year so far, seriously.

The video takes things one step further, though, mutating the meditative rock into something much more desperate and strange, with an eerie kind of blindness slowly taking over the band members and anybody else around them who looks up at the cosmic phenomenon in the sky. They’re all drawn together somehow, slowly coming face-to-face with an otherworldly pantheon of…gods and goddesses, I guess? That part’s a little hard to fathom, but they definitely have magical powers.

Whoever the magical people are, though, apparently humanity fails some kind of test, because suddenly the band’s playing in front of a blasted backdrop of a devastated Earth, with fire and ash and ruins everywhere. And at the last second, Dre himself turns into one of the pantheon and leaves the planet in a flash of white light. It’s heady, intriguing stuff, and definitely cool as hell to look at, with special effects that easily better some I’ve seen recently in movies. My hat’s off to y’all, Lotus Effect dudes — you delivered.

Check out the video for yourself, below (oh, and if you look quickly at the 3:37 mark, you’ll see my old boss, Cliff Kurtzman, over on the right of the crowd of “blind” people…):

Unfortunately, like I hinted at back at the beginning, I dropped the ball on the video. It debuted last month, and lo and behold, my lame ass is only now getting it up on the site. sigh. Sorry, everybody; things get in the way, sometimes.

To even things out a bit, though, take a listen below to another new Lotus Effect song, “Window Panes” — it definitely comes from the same stylistic realm as “Totality,” albeit with more screaming/howling from Dre, some more personal-sounding, less otherworldly lyrics, and an interesting Phrygian (I think?) bit of guitar phrasing. I liked the band’s 2010 EP, Rabbits & Royalty quite a bit, it’s true, but I also felt like the Lotus Effect guys were only starting to realize their promise; with these two new songs, they’ve truly hit the mark. I’m psyched as hell to hear the full-length.

Anyway, take a listen:

With all that out of the way, you should also now go see these guys live — really, you should. They’re playing at what’s being called Epic Fest out at the Acadia Bar & Grill, alongside {Saturate}, {Amongst The Living}, {Metal Down}, and {Reckless High}. Do it, y’all.