Potential hot take: I actually like Lotus. It feels like the mark they missed on Yokai, which felt very disjointed. Yeah, its lyrics are embarrassingly bad, even by metal standards. But it has this je ne sais quoi vibe to it. The best way I can describe it is the album just gives off hype, which the lyrics try their damn hardest to kill. That’s not to say the vocals are bad, I think they complement the instrumentals very well. I just wish they were in a different language or something so I didn’t have to understand them.

But I’m very happy to see them go back to their slam roots, definitely a sound I missed from them.