Bit Brigade · Dethlehem

Round four of seeing Bit Brigade, this time with Preston. If you haven't seen them, the pitch is hard to beat: a four-piece rock band performs the soundtrack of a classic NES or SNES game live, note-for-note, while their fifth member speedruns the actual game on a screen above the stage. The music has to follow the gameplay, the gameplay has to stay tight enough to follow the music, and the whole thing only works if everyone nails it. We've seen them tackle Mega Man, Castlevania, Super Mario World, and now Mega Man X — and somehow they keep finding ways to make the format feel fresh.

The opener was Dethlehem, who I had not seen before and who turned out to be one of the more entertaining surprises of the year. They're a Pittsburgh band — formed in 2008 as a one-off Halloween house party joke that never really stopped — playing what they call epic melodic death metal, but with the conceit that the band is a Dungeons & Dragons party on a quest. Everyone is in full medieval armor and chain mail. Stage names like Lord Bonecrush, Overlord Brom, and Hank the Guy. The lyrics are about battling mimics, dragons, and dark elves in the fictional realm of Ghorusalem. They hand out inflatable weapons to the crowd. It is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds, and they commit to the bit so completely that it crosses over into being genuinely fun. Musically, they're tighter than they have any right to be — real riffs, real chops — and the LARP-meets-melodic-death-metal angle made them a perfect pairing with a band that performs to live video game footage. A deeply Pittsburgh combination.

Then Bit Brigade took over for Mega Man X. The band locked in immediately, the runner went to work, and the room settled into that signature Bit Brigade rhythm where you find yourself watching the screen and the band in equal measure, marveling at how it's all staying in sync. The Mega Man X soundtrack is one of the all-time great game scores — every stage theme is iconic — and hearing it punched through a live rock band while X dashes and wall-jumps his way through the game is just a great time. Boss battles always get the loudest reaction, and this show was no exception.

Crafthouse is always a great place to see a show. Good sound, good sightlines, the food is genuinely solid, and the room feels right-sized for a band like Bit Brigade — big enough that you get the energy of a crowd, small enough that you can actually see the screen and the speedrun. Drusky Entertainment has built a nice thing with that venue. Easy night out, and Preston had a blast. We'll be back for round five.