Esteemed local metal drummer Opus has been doing his Blizzard B-Day Bashes at Toad’s Place in New Haven for decades now. This year, the Blizzard Bash has snowballed into a week-long tour for Opus’ band Dead by Wednesday and the California band Skinlab, which hasn’t played the East Coast in years.
That tour culminates with the annual Toad’s Place event featuring 13 bands and an afterparty on Jan. 11.
“Every year I do that party,” said Opus, whose real name is Christian Lawrence and who besides his long musical career has been appeared on several reality TV series. “It’s not really about my birthday anymore. There’s not so much going on in the winter so it always does really well.
“This year I decided I wanted to bring Skinlab from the West Coast,” he added. “Instead of flying them in for one show, why not extend it into a little run for them. Then, what could I call it? I went with the Blizzard Bash Tour, and I’m keeping the ‘B-Day’ part for just Toad’s. We do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday then they fly home.”
Skinlab, founded in 1994, is still led by its founding vocalist/bassist Steev Esquivel. The band has disbanded or gone on hiatus multiple times in its three decades of existence. Skinlab released three key albums between 1997 and 2002, including “Bound, Gagged and Blindfolded,” “Disembody: The New Flesh” and “ReVoltingRoom,” and have released just two other full albums since then: “The Scars Between Us” in 2009 and “Venomous” in 2019. A new single, “Flesh Wounds” just came out in November. According to Opus, Skinlab hasn’t toured the East Coast in a decade.
The Dead by Wednesday/Skinlab tour begins on Jan. 7 at The Woodshop in Brooklyn, New York. On Jan. 8, the bands will be at Dingbatz in Clifton, New Jersey. Jan. 9 brings the Blizzard Bash to Lovedrafts Brewing Co. in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. On Jan. 10, it is at the new CitySpace arts center in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and Jan. 11 is Toad’s Place. The tour ends on Jan. 12 as part of the Extreme Music Awards presentation at the Empire Underground in Albany, New York. The awards are devoted to “metal, punk, hardcore and all things heavy!,” according to its organizers.
Each of the stops on the tour feature two or three opening bands from the area where the show is happening, acts that Opus knows and personally invited onto the bill. “I handpicked different locals that are really cool, friends of mine or friends of Steev,” Opus said.
The New Haven show dwarfs all the others by having over a dozen bands — six of them in Toad’s Place’s smaller upstairs Lily’s Pad area — as well as an afterparty in Lily’s Pad where the musicians are encouraged to take part in a long live jam that will focus on Metallica songs. The main Blizzard B-Day Bash at Toad’s runs from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Jan. 11, with the afterparty happening from 10 until closing time.
Besides Skinlab and Dead by Wednesday, Saturday’s lineup includes the well-known Connecticut bands Casting Shadows, DirT, Murder Monday, Dystopica and Mourn the Light, all on the Toad’s Place main stage. The Lily Pad stage features younger or up-and-coming bands such IKILLYA, Syfon, Inverter, Fear the Masses, Skincrawl and Zach Attack. Alcoholica hosts the afterparty.
Opus’ birthday really is in January, Jan. 5 to be exact, but the timing for the Blizzard Bash is good for other reasons. One of Opus’ main gigs these days is drumming for the legendary New York hardcore punk band The Cro-Mags, which has been around in various forms since 1980 and which Opus joined in 2023 when the band’s longtime drummer Gary “G-Man” Sullivan was no longer able to tour. “The Cro-Mags don’t do December/January,” Opus said, “so I capitalize on that and do stuff for my guys.”
Opus isn’t one for maintaining tradition for no reason. He doesn’t even remember what year the first Blizzard B-day Bash happened. “I don’t keep track,” he said. “It’s just a long-ass time.”
Opus would love to do Blizzard Bash tours in the future if it makes sense to do them. He mentions Ozzy Osbourne’s Ozzfest and the Stillborn Fest organized by Connecticut hardcore legend Jamey Jasta as two major touring events that began as festivals in a single city.
The Blizzard B-Day Bash’s popularity is undeniable. For some attendees, it’s a handy showcase of the current state of the metal scene in Connecticut and beyond. For others, it’s nostalgia. Dead by Wednesday has been around nearly 20 years and Opus’ other bands, the Metallica tribute Alcoholica and the Black Sabbath tribute Earth, have been around even longer.
To promote the shows, Opus uses social media and the familiarity of having the event at the same time every year. But he also takes nothing for granted, trusting in old school methods like flyering. When Jamey Jasta played the Space Ballroom in Hamden in November, Opus put passes to the Blizzard Bash under the windshield wipers of hundreds of cars in the parking lot during a heavy rain. He also insists that the other bands on the bill work hard to bring their own fans to the show. “I tell them that Toad’s is a prestigious thing just to get into that place,” Opus said.
The result of the effort is an eagerly awaited annual event that regularly fills both the large main club and the smaller Lily’s Pad space. Opus expresses pride that the club’s main booking company, Live Nation, “books us over any other act because they know that we will draw a crowd.”
One thing that promoters do worry about this time of year is inclement weather. Has the Blizzard B-Day Bash ever taken place during a real blizzard? “Yeah, once, maybe twice,” Opus said. “But people came out to the show anyway.”
Opus’ Blizzard B-Day Bash 2025 takes place on Jan. 11 from 2 to 10 p.m., plus an afterparty, at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven. Tickets are $15, $12 in advance. toadsplace.com.
