Synth effect

There are quite a few different synth sounds in that intro - a pad sound, a vocal sounding riff, a short percussive bass sound, then a bright sustained bass sound.

Anyway, there are various synth pedals out there. I would start by looking at the Boss SYB5 and Behringer BSY600. After that there's the ElectroHarmonix Bass Micro Synth and the MarkBass Super Synth. You can also get synth patches on many multi effects like the Zoom B3.

If you got more money, you can look at discontinued second hand pedals like the Korg G5 and Akai Deep Impact.

Another route is with combinations of separate pedals. Try an octave pedal into a fuzz into an envelope filter. Other people will tell you that none of these approaches sounds like a real synth and you should just go ahead and buy one.

Have a search on this forum for synth pedal and you will find a zillion threads discussing them. Here's a few:

Analog Synth Pedals
Synth newbie: which pedal to start with
Markbass Super Synth
ways to make synth bass sounds

 

You are not going to get there with a bass guitar and a pedal... you need to look towards a little fatty or a microkorg ($250 used) for a cheaper option. By the time you spend $1000 on a ton of different pedals you could of just bought a analog. Another option for you is to look into the Sylenth1 ($80). It is a FANTASTIC sounding vst that really sounds close to analog.

Also Justin Mendel Johnson played most of the instruments on that album. You could ask him in his forum.

 

It's on the high end price wise, but you can also check out Pigtronics "Mothership".

 

The Sonuus i2M works great and can control any soft synth or midi device. There are a million ways to set it up too.
Some sounds just sound better played on an actual keyboard though.

 

+1 you can chase synth effects all over, and combinations thereof, but a keyboard synth will get you what you want every time.

 

Octaver -> Distortion -> Envelope filter -> Second distortion -> Detuned chorus

That can give you a nice aggressive synth sound.

But I agree it's easier, and more versatile sound-wise, to simply use a keyboard synth. Cheaper too.