In the Gutter with Charlotte’s Favorite Sludge-Punk Band
By: A.G.M. (Life on The Charlotte Scene)
Photos by: Seth Rodriguez (@innerdistortion)
WASTOID– undoubtedly one of the Charlotte hardcore/ DIY scene’s most beloved and recognizable bands. With three Spotify album releases in 2022, including Government Sanctioned Weaponized Fem Boys, Burnt Out Wastoid Gutter Demon, and a live album, LIVESTOID, the band marries hardcore, punk, and experimental elements to create a versatile sound; one that is at times distorted, heavy, and shouted, and at others, ambient and melodic. But while Wastoid’s hardcore sound and energy distinguish the band musically, it’s their heavy and spirited live performances—and the lively and engaged crowds drawn around them—that have won them their beloved status in the local Charlotte DIY/underground scene. A Wastoid show means a crowd that will fill up an entire venue or outside patio, kids flocking in a circling crowd full of elbow bumping, jumping, and letting loose—at some point throughout the set, you’re guaranteed to see kids backflipping through a crowd, rolling on hard concrete in the midst of stomping black shoes on cement pavement, and, of course, crowd surfing.
A few months back, after the band faced an unfortunate car theft in which the band’s equipment and laptop, which contained their new album, were stolen, I remembered seeing supportive fans online calling attention to support the band, with Wastoid fans echoing similar sentiments of: “Wastoid lets us bring all we have, and just let it all out at their shows…They’ve given us the space to let it all out, now, let’s let it out for them.” Whether made apparent by their spoken support, or Wastoid fans’ buzzing physicality and energy at shows, one thing is more than certain—the band represents a space of belonging, release, and community to the Charlotte underground and D.I.Y scene.
Wastoid is comprised of vocalist Mike Smith, guitarists Jarrett Mintz and Lane Claffee, bassist Grace Nelson, and drummer Andrew Knockenhauer. In the overgrown parking between sets at a Spoke Easy show, I caught up with this down-to-earth and passionate bunch to learn more about Wastoid’s beginnings, inspirations, and love of playing shows.
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In the Beginning…
“Me and Mikey have been making music together for like, eight years”, says Jarret Mintz, guitarist for Wastoid and its sister band, Dead Senate—Mintz and Mike Smith’s first musical project. “We were always making music in Mike’s trailer… we never really planned to play shows with it, we were just sort of making it”, says Mintz. “Then, we had like, thirty-five songs, and after a year of playing as Dead Senate, we had enough people to form Wastoid. I think doing shows for Dead Senate really helped fanbase wise, right when we started we had people coming out, which was really cool—it wasn’t like that a year and a half ago [during COVID].”
With a friendship spanning years, Wastoid members Mike Smith, Jarrett Mintz, Lane Claffee, and Andrew ‘Tommy’ Knockenhauer would meet at a grad week in Myrtle Beach, fostering a friendship and mutual interest in music which would serve as the driving force behind the group’s undertaking of various musical projects together—before eventually culminating into the self-described ‘sludge-punk’ band Wastoid.
“It’s been like, ten years, that we’ve all been hanging out and making music”, says guitarist Lane Claffee.
“I’ve known Jarret since I was like, 13, 12”, says Mike Smith, frontman and vocalist of Wastoid. “When I was about 14, I met Tommy [Knockenhauer], and I met Lane when I was about 17. When we first started the band, Lane joined immediately, and it was just me, him, and Jarrett for like a year, no one else”, explains Mike. “These [Jarrett and Lane] are two of my best friends right here… I’ve known them for most of my whole life, and they’re fantastic musicians, they really are”, beams Smith.
Guitarist Lane Claffee explains that much of Wastoid’s earliest songs were written mainly by Jarrett and Mike—with the vocalist being the mind behind the lyrics, while Jarrett would compose and arrange the song’s instrumentation—much of which, surprisingly, was done digitally.
“It was literally just Jarrett [composing the songs], except for times that he’d want me to come up with a bass line,” says Mike of Wastoid’s earliest songs. “He’d [Jarrett] manipulate these drum parts and make them sound real, it was just fantastic. All of the drums on those early tracks are fake drums, they’re computerized…and he’d just fuck with them until they sounded like real drums. He’d make the guitar, the rhythm guitar, the bass line…so, I always had a fun little thing to paint on”, Mike whispers poignantly for dramatic effect, cracking a smile.
Wastoid would go through a couple of different guitarists and bassists before reaching their current lineup—the most recent additions to the band being bassist Grace Nelson, and long-time friend/drummer Andrew ‘Tommy’ Knockenhauer: “I’ve played with pretty much everybody here for years”, explains Knockenhauer. “Mike and I have made music, Jarrett and I used to jam, and Lane and I have been jamming for years.”
Mike laughs heartily, adding: “Me and Tommy used to make bad music—we would just smoke blunts all day, and he’d be like: ‘I got six beats for you’… we’d make a million ‘fuckin little rap songs.”
“I think when Tommy joined the band, that was a key moment”, says Grace. “Since I joined the band, I loved being in it, but up until then, I still felt like, ‘It’s not it yet’. When he [Tommy] joined the band, there was a moment in the set, where I started freestyling a bass line, and Tommy just joined right in, and we played a whole song together, just freestyling. I had never been able to do that with any other drummer”, says the bassist.
As for bassist Grace Nelson (or “Grace on Bass by the grace of God” as dually dubbed by Jarrett and Mike), Wastoid would recruit her through another one of Charlotte’s local bands, Cosmictwynk.
“It’s kind of funny, ‘cause how I joined Wastoid was Mike texting Music [Cosmictwynk’s drummer]”, explains Nelson. “He was like: ‘Does Grace want to play bass?’, and at the time, I was kind of trying out other bands, so my schedule was a little full. So, Music said no for me, and I happened to look over Music’s shoulder and I was like ‘What are you doing!”, and he said: ‘Oh I’m sorry, I thought you would be busy so I answered for you’”, she laughs. “So I texted Mike and I said ‘You need a bassist, I’m in.’ recalls Nelson. “It’s just funny, ‘cause it was such a total chance thing, like happening to see the text and then texting Mike.”
The bassist says of first joining the band: “I had seen Mike in Dead Senate, and truthfully, I was super scared of Mike for a while—‘cause he just has this energy about him on stage, where I was just like, ‘Oh my god, he’s gonna kill me’”, chuckles Grace. “I was intimidated at first joining Wastoid, but then when I did, I realized they’re [all] goofballs—they’re silly dudes”, says Nelson. “I think we’re at the point in Wastoid where we’re like, ‘this is the final form’, we’re very happy where we’re at right now, for sure. I think we blend really well together as musicians. Making songs and playing together, it just works.”
Songwriting
“Most of the time, the song will start off with a riff Lane writes”, explains Nelson. “Jarrett will come up with these super cool, weird chords, and then Tommy will come up with drums. I’ll usually come up with a bass line that follows what he’s doing on drums. It really starts with Lane—he really has a lot of stuff cooking in the brain”, says the bassist.
“I try to pre-write most of the lyrics”, adds Mike. “Just life experiences, and other people’s life experiences, ‘cause other people have really cool stuff to say”, explains the frontman. “We’ve known each other [the band] forever, we’re like the same fuckin’ people, so usually, when they say something, I’m like, I can agree with that, I want to talk about that.”
Smith adds: “Sometimes Jarrett will give me a call, and he’ll be like ‘Yo, this next song- is about people who always say ‘yes’ and kiss your fucking ass!!”, prompting the band to burst into laughter, with Jarrett grinning as he relents: “That was one time”.
What’s your favorite song to play live?
“I like Supressor”, says Jarrett.
“Human Error”, says guitarist Lane Claffee, to Knockenhauer’s agreement.
“We play these (songs) every night, and certain ones just hit harder. I think we all get excited when there’s something new to play—I’d have to say for now, Glass Pack is my favorite, just because of crowd participation when we hit it at full speed”, says Mike.
Inspirations
“I always talk about The Melvins, even though we only have like two songs that sound like them”, says guitarist Lane Claffee. “I really like The Birthday Party too, they’re really cool.”
“The band that made me want to start making music with guitar, was Hella”, says Jarrett Mintz.
“When I was 7 years old, I heard the first album by My Chemical Romance”, recalls vocalist Mike Smith. “I Brought You My Bullets, it’s one of the best albums ever. Then I started listening to Leathermouth. And I didn’t even know what punk was back then, because I was a ten-year-old kid, so like, a lot of my life, I didn’t even know I liked punk rock music until I dove into it in my later teens. I’d say those two bands were my big inspirations”, says Smith.
“I really love Knocked Loose”, says bassist Grace Nelson. ‘They’re one of my favorite bands—and I really like big ‘chuggy’ stuff, anytime in Wastoid when I come up with a bass part—that [band] is just instantly what I think about.” Nelson lists the nu metal genre as another big influence on her playing style: “I have a lot of nu metal inspirations, like Deftones and System of A Down, Incubus…With a lot of my bass lines, I’m inspired by the bass lines in Incubus songs—like, having something funky in the midst of all that chaos”, says Nelson
Coming To You Live from Charlotte, N.C.
When it comes to playing shows, Wastoid eagerly agrees that some of their fondest memories have been formed performing at local venues like Charlotte’s The Spoke Easy and Milestone. The band also shares a deep appreciation for playing alongside fellow bands within Charlotte’s underground music community.
“There’s a lot of great moments [when it comes to playing live], but my favorite shows definitely have to be a fuckin’ Spoke Easy show. People come out here, these kids, and they fucking mosh, and it’s concrete—like, they just fall on hard concrete. It’s crazy”, Wastoid’s frontman explains enthusiastically. “There’s always a huge crowd here, playing an all-ages venue in a city like Charlotte…it’s really cool, and it’s also really risky for the venues who host them, that’s why a lot of venues who do all-ages shows don’t do them for long. So, the fact that they do it anyway is really cool and we appreciate that”, says Mike.
The band speaks fondly of playing shows alongside other bands of the Charlotte underground scene, notably, Wastoid’s sister band, Dead Senate’s, first show with fellow hardcore punk band, C.I.APE: “Our first Milestone show with a fuck ton of people, was a Milestone show with C.I.APE. It was amazing—we played Milestone every fucking weekend that year, we played it all the time, and we didn’t really have any fans that would know us. It was maybe like, twenty, twenty-five people would come to Milestone [to see us], not a lot”, recalls Mike. “Once we played with them [C.I.APE], that was the first 100 people show, and the crowd was fuckin’ phenomenal. That show was the point we really started having people coming to shows—I realized then: ‘Oh, there really is a punk scene in Charlotte’, explains the vocalist. “Before that point, it kind of seemed like there were punk bands who would mainly just tour, and pretty much stuck to themselves. But, we played with APE, and they were young, and they were full of energy—and they brought people who had energy. I love Charlie, he’s a cool-ass fuckin’ frontman, I love Jodie [APE’s bassist], Jodie’s dope as fuck, and in Plan B”.
Drummer ‘Tommy’ Knockenhauer fondly recalls playing at The Milestone with fellow NC-based rock band, Babehaven, at a sold-out show in February: “I really liked that show—that shit was insane. To have so many people show up for a show like that—it’s something else”, says Tommy.
Bassist Grace Nelson says her favorite show as a band was the first one she ever played with the rest of Wastoid: “I’ve been a pianist my whole life, and playing bass—this was one of my first shows really ever trying out a new instrument, and I had never really played in a band before”, explains Nelson. “They were super encouraging—Mike was being a cheesy motherfucker, and they recorded it, the crowd was amazing, everyone was super into it. Playing that show was one of my favorite memories, because after that, I knew—‘I need to stick with this band’.
Nelson says of her experiences with the local Charlotte punk/D.I.Y scene: “My background is definitely that of a classical pianist, I used to play recitals, and it was a completely different world. But, I got into this scene because of music from Ink Swell, the drummer, he introduced me to the music scene in general—and I had no idea this world existed, honestly”, the bassist explains, “That it was here, that it was such a big part of everyone’s lives—it’s a huge music scene here in Charlotte, I had no idea that there were so many fans of local bands…seeing local bands play was super inspiring. Honestly, any local band in Charlotte is automatically an inspiration for sure. It’s definitely a small circle, and we all know each other”, says the bassist. “Everyone’s so supportive—on the outside, you wouldn’t think that, ‘cause its like: ‘Oh, punk kids’, but everyone is so sweet”, she says.
When it comes to support, Jarrett and Mike express that it’s fans of the local music scene—and their sense of encouragement and energy—that Wastoid deeply appreciates.
“It’s insane”, says Jarret, “It’s when the little stuff happens—like, I remember the first time I saw someone wearing a homemade Wastoid patch”, says the guitarist.
Mike agrees: “When people do their own personal merch, that’s the kind of shit that lets me know we’re doing it…Because a lot of the times, we don’t really know, we sort of just show up and play, we don’t really party or anything afterward”, says the vocalist.
For Mike, playing and performing in Wastoid has been a deeply rewarding experience: “You want to give everything 110%”, says the vocalist. “When you’re doing a project like this, all you can think about is the next thing…right now, it’s sort of being in the state of overdrive”, he says.
“There’s never been a time where I’ve been like: ‘Maybe I shouldn’t do this’, says Smith. “Even now, it’s gotten to the point where I’m starting to see pay-off, but I could be playing for nobody, and it would still just be fun ”, says Mike. “Like, we’ll play some out-of-town shows that are shit fuckin’ bills, and no one comes—when that happens, you just kind of face your band, and you just say ‘Fuck it’—never once did I think about not doing it. It’s the best thing in the whole fuckin’ world’.
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Catch WASTOID at their next two upcoming shows this summer: June 30th at The Milestone, and July 7th at The Howard Station in Boone. WASTOID’s discography is available to stream on Bandcamp and Spotify.
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