It’s a sauna of a Thursday night at Park City Music Hall in Black Rock, and Benjamin Curns isn’t having any of it.

“How many of you are sick and tired?!”

Megaphone angled at a swelling crowd, he already knows the answer: a whole lot of them. Show after show, night after night, always a whole lot of them.

It’s covid isolation. It’s the planet in the flames of never-ending wars and police brutality. It’s the billionaire with his fingers in the till. A drug addled America goose-stepping her way toward tragedy. Under all these things, it’s the soil from which He Was A God took final shape in summer 2021.

Curns is the fifth and ultimate addition to the New Haven, Connecticut metal outfit – brainchild of guitarist, keyboardist, and backing vocalist Tony Pellino. Chris Densky (drums), Dan Perrone (bass) and Ray Zvovushe (lead guitars) cap a lineup of musicians who grew up performing together on stages across the New York City tristate area.

Under their new banner, He Was A God made its live debut in December 2021, commencing a run of performances in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts with metal veterans Life of Agony and (hed)P.E. Through their live shows, wrote Karen Ponzio in The New Haven Independent, the band “unleashes a torrent of charismatic heavy metal with a message…as fun as it is furious.”

Their EP, The Smile & The Scar, recorded in fall 2021, received steady acclaim. From Headbangers Lifestyle: “The debut fires on all engines with ferocious riffing and tenacious melodies…fused with a downright genius timing for emotion and sheer agony.”

In 2023, following a run of live performances that included support for Goatwhore and Katatonia, the band enlisted renowned engineer Ryan Boesch (Melvins, Helmet, Norma Jean) to craft its debut album. The result is Muckraker, an 11-track canon of aggression, hope, rage and optimism. Slated for a February 23, 2024 release, Muckraker swaps personal tragedies of The Smile & The Scar for social and political grievances common to us all. Its punk contrarianism, heavy riffs, and harmonious progressions are wholly He Was A God.

Shagohod started as a joke in 2013. Long-time buds and frequent musical collaborators Drew Bligh and Dave Coffey thought it’d be neat to drink 40s and play a particular PS2 game for 12 hours straight. They did that. Then, they formed Shagohod.

It started as a half-serious song sent over a webcam, then morphed into a couple of tracks banged out in freeware guitar tablature. One thing led to another, and in 2017, just between the two of them, they somehow wrote and recorded a full-length album: The Treading Behemoth.

Since then, they’ve picked up some insanely talented bandmates (Ben Lane and Ryan Wantroba), played a ton of shows (from “basements” to “bars that look an awful lot like basements”) and regretted nothing. On December 3rd 2021, they released their second full length record – Tin, Gold, Lead & Blood, this time an ambitious Western-Themed prog epic. Because of course.

Bone Church is Blues based, acid laced, doom infused rock & roll from Connecticut.

$16 Advance / $19 Day of