Lotus Perform ‘Hammerstrike’ in Sacramento

On Wednesday, Jan. 28, Lotus made a special stop at Sacramento, Calif.’s Goldfield Trading Post. For the final Golden State show in its 2024 Winter Tour, the group surprised fans by diverging from its typical eclectic range from its two decades of releases to perform the entirety of its 2008 album Hammerstrike in sequence. This endeavor is available to stream now via nugs.net.

Lotus’ performance was fit to a single-set format, with 11 tracks in the main event followed by a two-track blended encore. The first ten of these songs were the tracklist of Hammerstrike, the band’s gritty, alt-rock-inflected seventh album. While some of the project’s early tracks like the panning, guitar-heavy “Age of Inexperience” and progressive Kraftwerk-esque “Bellwether” are familiar favorites that have already been staged in 2024, the setlist was highlighted by a massive dust-off of “Modicum,” bridging the subtle, polyrhythmic funk select’s 391 show gap since its last performance on April 14, 2015. Lotus shared the thought process behind this grand revival on Facebook: the group simply “decided to have some fun.”

After the final chords of album closer “Disappear in a Blood Red Sky,” Lotus’ set culminated in “Jump Off” from the group’s breakthrough sophomore album Nomad. The group returned to the stage for an encore with “Pluck” from its most recent studio album Bloom & Recede, followed by the live standard “128” as a wink to the show date.

Lotus returns to the stage tonight at Portland, Ore.’s Crystal Ballroom. Next, the band will make four more stops in Washington and Montana to close out its winter tour, before embarking for sets on the sea with Jam Cruise 20 on Feb. 25. For tickets and more information, visit lotusvibes.com.