On April 5th, 2008, Lotus played The Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City. The show that night was special, to say the least, with an enviable setlist featuring a generally spacey and ambient five-song first set.

Starting off with “Flower Sermon”, the band was particularly dialed into one another and the crowd. Following “Greyrigg”, for the third song of the night, Dutch DJ Kypski came out to lay it down on the turntables for “Alkaline”. Following this, Lotus moved into fan-favorite “Sunrain”, which they jammed out significantly before dropping into a stand-out cover of Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name”.

The band had covered the high-energy Rage Against The Machine original three times until that point, performing it twice in 2007 ahead of this final, third performance on April 5th, 2008.

The bass-heavy, aggressive cover, which starts around the nine-minute mark of the recording, came in stark contrast to the light, bubbly nature of “Sunrain”. Throughout the audio recording, the listener can hear the crowd go off at this unexpected change, singing along to the well-known chorus lines. To finish out the first set, the group offered up yet another feel-good fan favorite, “Sunrain”, much to the delight of the crowd.

Lotus came back locked and loaded for the second set, kicking things off with “Age of Inexperience”. From there, the band followed up its energetic opener with a particularly segue-heavy sequence started off by “Plant Your Root” into “Umbilical Moonset”. To end the well-jammed three-song sequence, Lotus finished off the “Sunrain” from the first set that gave way to the Rage Against The Machine cover. Ending on “Bellwether” then “One Last Hurrah”, it’s clear that this show is one for the books, only solidified by the two-song encore of “72 Hours Awake” and “Greet The Mind.”

Listen to the full-show audio of this outstanding Lotus performance below.

Lotus – The Fillmore at Irving Plaza – 4/5/08 [Full-Show Audio]

[Audio: Matt Casey]