(Jiu-Jitsu from left to right: Josh Anderson, Garret Nance, Anthony Rasmussen and Christian Helms, Riley Ferrar)
Interview by A.G.M. (Life on the Charlotte Scene)
Photos by Seth Rodriguez (@innerdisortion)
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“One on one, fight each other, the winner dies in the ambulance!” shrieks vocalist Christian Helms on stage, sweat-drenched blonde hair flying as his headbangs are accompanied by colliding blast-hits on the drums and thrashing, electrifying wails of guitar and bass. In the crowd below, fists collide and bodies crash into a sweaty, swirling circle pit; the audience trouncing on the ground or ambushing one another as boots hit the ground to a chaotic rhythm.
Formed relatively recently in February of 2023, Jiu-Jitsu has quickly become a favorite of Charlotte’s D.I.Y. scene. Recognizable by both their calling-card voicemail introduction, featuring local Charlotte hotdog vendor Carlos of Carlitos Dogs, and the presence of somersaulting crowd-killers at each show, the self-described “raw hardcore” band aims to bring their beat-down sound to the Charlotte scene.
“Seeing people just run at each other and fuckin’ go at it, it’s like the coolest thing ever,” grins vocalist Christian Helms. “We want to be that band for Charlotte.”
While Jiu Jitsu’s sound may at times be harsh, the down-to-earth group forming the band is anything but. Consisting of Anthony Rasmussen and Riley Ferrar on guitar, Christian Helms on vocals, Garret Nance on bass, and Josh Anderson on drums, the band includes among themselves two Environmental Science majors, two Engineering students, and even a chef at a fine dining restaurant in Davidson.
Seated on the Milestone’s outdoor patio before their set, I spoke to Jiu-Jitsu about their commitment to local hardcore, the anecdote behind the iconic voicemail intro heard on Chopped, and how being held at knifepoint makes excellent song material.
LOTCS: How did you all meet?
Anthony: Riley and I have known each other since elementary school, we’re originally from a town called Statesville, and so is Josh. And the rest of us met through college.
Christian: Except for Josh, I met Josh through a friend of mine.
Anthony: Three of us met in a small town, and the rest of us met at UNC Charlotte.
Christian: We met in earth science class.
Anthony: We’re both earth and environmental science majors, I started going to shows and we both wore cool t-shirts, we got put in the same group on a whim.
Christian: I remember we met specifically in the forest at UNCC, for an assignment. He [Anthony] was wearing a Knocked Loose shirt, and I was like “I like that band.”
Riley: It’s just funny because you [Christian] started talking to me because I was wearing a Green Day shirt of all bands. We were sitting in a common area, and he just started talking to me about all these metal bands.
LOTCS: When did you all decide you wanted to start playing music together?
Anthony: We [Riley, Christian, and I] first experimented as a metalcore band, Corduroy Boxers. With the drummer from CIApe too actually, who is also from Statesville.
Riley: We had a punk drummer who only had like a single pedal, so it just was not gonna work as a metalcore band. But it was still a great experience.
Christian: We had a few practices where it was just me and Anthony.
Riley: I was supposed to play drums at the start, and I am garbage at drums. Luckily, Josh was available.
Josh: They tried to get me in for 6 weeks in a row, like “Hey, can you come?”, and something came up literally every time. There was one point where I was sick, and then there was another one where work called me… and then we finally got together, and we clicked like 3 songs in 30 minutes.
Anthony: I didn’t think the band was gonna exist until Josh came in really.
Riley: Anthony texted us randomly, and was like “Hey, we have a show on May 6th!” and we had like, two or three songs that we could barely play straight through. Two months later, we had like five more.
LOTCS: What are some of your conceptual and musical inspirations?
Riley: Anthony was doing Jiu-Jitsu at the time…
Anthony: I started doing Jiu-Jitsu, and it was what I wanted from my music—It’s controlled violence, that’s kind of where the idea of Jiu-Jitsu in my head is. That’s what I want for music as well.
Christian: The biggest influence on our sound is that everyone has ADHD of some sort. [LAUGHS]
Riley: Everyone listens to a different genre of metal. He [Anthony] used to be super into Mind Force, the first two songs we played he wrote, and they sounded a lot like Mind Force. Now they’ve evolved, because we’ve all come in and added parts to it. Anthony was predominantly metal-core, and Christian was predominantly death-metal, I’m not sure what I would say because I’m into literally anything. I’ll listen to Native American flute music in the shower.
Christian: Just hardcore and beatdown is really what I’m into.
LOTCS: What’s the process like when you guys write together? Do you guys jam together or does somebody come up with specific parts?
Anthony: The first few songs, someone would come in, write all of the song, and then come in and show it to everyone. That process is really painful, because it takes so long to show everyone what you’re thinking.
Riley: It’s kind of just best to come in with a riff.
Riley: Anthony writes hella riffs, and then we add off of it, and then Christian will add his two cents. We’re trying to do more dueling guitar parts, since we’ve got two guitarists, we might as well take advantage.
Christian: The way I like to think about it, the songs are written by one person and then edited by the whole band. Written by one or two people, and then the whole band puts in their part.
Anthony: We just want to make the best thing we can.
Josh: It usually ends up, he [Riley] comes in, adds a riff, Anthony adds to it, and then we can’t figure out when to add to the riff, so I’m like, okay, let’s figure out a structure, please.
Jiu-Jitsu: [LAUGHS]
Josh: And then Christian just hollers random shit in the background.
Christian: I just try to make it more slam-y, usually.
Anthony: We love having the two guitars too, it really makes it a little bit heavier whenever they’re playing the same parts. The bass follows the guitar a lot, so it sounds deeper.
Riley: Garret is begging us to let him put a tapping part in our songs.
Anthony: He’s just like running arpeggios in the background, but he doesn’t have any Mid so we can’t hear it. [LAUGHS]
Riley: And the rest of us are just playing chunky shit.
Anthony: We’ll be at practice, we’ll have like earplugs in, and the bass frequencies are so loud that I’m throwing drumsticks at Garret just to make him shut up. [LAUGHS]
Garret: I purposely like, I took it from Korn– no Mids in my tone, ‘cause I can turn up really loud, and I’ll never drown out the guitars.
Riley: That’s what he thinks. [LAUGHS]
Garret: It normally works.
Anthony: Do you want to tell them what he did at that first Milestone show?
Riley: Dude, we sound-checked, and then afterward Garret just cranks it back up.
Riley and Anthony: [LAUGH]
Anthony: He had his amp up to 5 during sound check, and then after he turned it up to 7 or 8.
Josh: He’s like, “People were complimenting the bass,” yeah, it’s all they could hear! [LAUGHS].
LOTCS: Where does your inspiration for lyrics come from?
Christian: We all kind of write lyrics, our newest song, Violent Ways, is one that I actually wrote. We were sitting there, and practice was kind of winding down. I was like, “What do I write this song about?” and Riley said, “Does it matter? Just make it Hard as Fuck”, and I was like, okay!
Riley: [LAUGHS]
Anthony: The way the song opens up, it reminds me of like, an angry version of Cherry Waves by Deftones.
Riley: No! We do not sound like Deftones. At all.
Riley: Go listen to Encore Noire if you want Deftones. Sweet Spine too.
Anthony: We love them.
LOTCS: What’s it like playing for the Charlotte scene, having been a part of that community before being a band?
Anthony: It’s a blast.
Christian: It’s so much fun- it’s really supportive.
Christian: There’s just this kind of weird mosh culture in Charlotte, though, where like, they don’t want you to slam. It’s not even push pits, it’s like all two step. If even that. It’s mostly just pogo now.
Anthony: We want to be that [crowd-killing] band for Charlotte.
Riley: A few of our first shows were kind of funny, because we have so many breakdowns in our stuff, and people would just kind of stop and be like: “What do I do?” [Laughs].
Christian: When we did go to Greensboro, at Above Ward, it was our first show out of town–people were throwing hands at that show. It was a big open skate park, and there was a lot of contact, we were like, this is the shit we want.
LOTCS: What do you guys want people to take away from your shows/music?
Anthony: It’s a good time, and all of us are good people.
Anthony: And none of us have talked to minors.
Jiu Jitsu: [LAUGHS]
Josh: There you go.
Riley: We love animals, we love the earth, and we love positivity.
Anthony: We want to be for the community. I felt so accepted by this community, and it made me so happy. They made me feel like I could do anything– it was the first time I felt like I could actually start a band, when I got accepted by this community. And everybody’s been so supportive.
Josh: Yeah! We came in and played our first show, and there were like over a hundred fifty people.
Anthony: We played our first show to 250 people, they had no clue what we were gonna sound like, and they accepted us. That’s what I want to do for the rest of the community, I just want to show them the same love and support.
Christian: Especially like, Carlos from Carlitos Dogs. He’s been with us all the way. And Tiff Tantrum, from No Anger Control. She’s been a huge help.
Josh: Carlos makes good fucking food. It’s worth it. He pops out at Snug Harbor most often, super chill guy.
LOTCS: Speaking of Carlos, what’s the story behind his voicemail cameo on Projection?
[“Ayo Pete, what up man, it’s Carlos, man. Holy shit, I gotta tell you something bro– I seen this young band out with Mateo, we were at a show, Jiu Jitsu. Yo son, they blew me the fuck away. Kids are bringing the real deal, man. Remember their name, dawg, Jiu Jitsu.” ]
Christian: At the start of our first song on the demo, that’s a voicemail that he sent to one of his boys.
Josh: “Mateo, I just saw this young band…”
Anthony: The story of that is that at our first show, we were all nervous to play. And he just walks up and grabs the mic from Christian, and he’s like “This is their first show, we need it to go fucking crazy!”
Riley: We all looked terrified [Laughs].
Christian: Cause he’s so big, he literally pushed me out of the way and grabbed the mic from me. [Laughs] At first I thought he might be mad at me or something.
Anthony: That was at our very very first show at Spoke Easy, at Slay Together.
Josh: Garret’s bass amp blew up, my drums fell apart three times, Riley’s amp wasn’t loud enough… [Christian] Weren’t you having mic trouble?
Christian: No, I just missed a bunch of lyrics. [LAUGHS]
LOTCS: What are some other favorite shows that you guys have played together?
Josh: Our last Milestone show in the Summer was so sick.
Riley: Our show with Sweet Spine and Consumer Culture.
Christian: I was gonna say, was it at the Consumer Culture show where I pretended to suck Gami’s dick? I hope that was funny.
Jiu Jitsu: [Laughs]
Anthony: Young Death God (a.k.a. Gami) was the first D.I.Y. musician I ever saw in Charlotte.
Christian: The next day I was like, “I’m so embarrassed”, but then the more I thought about it, I was like nah, that went hard as fuck.
LOTCS: It was so loud. You did it into the mic!
Anthony: Someone in the crowd yelled “Slob on the knob!”
Josh: Christian was like, “Gami, get back up here.”
Christian: [Laughs] That was a one-and-done thing.
What’s your favorite part of playing shows as a band?
Christian: I like making people hit each other, that’s my favorite part. Especially in Knife Fight, we have this part where I say “One on one, fight each other, the winner dies in the ambulance!”–and seeing people just run at each other and fuckin’ go at it, it’s like the coolest thing ever.
Garret: I wrote that song ‘cause Riley had a knife pulled on him– I went home and was like, we’re gonna write this. I’ve heard about knife fights, and it’s “The winner dies in the ambulance.” That’s where that lyric came from. And then, we had the idea for the ambulance siren chords, and Riley figured them out.
Riley: We have a kind of siren-sounding riff that I play.
Josh: We had a part in that song where it would pause and sound like M-16 gunshots in the middle.
Garret: It’s a fun song, I enjoy it. I saw a bassist for Demon Teeth do it, and that’s when I started doing it. He just, like, punches down on all the strings. I was like, that’s so cool, I’ve got to do it.
Josh: I think my favorite part of being in the scene and playing is how we go and put all of our passion into these songs, and create something that we love, and then we get a positive response from others out in the community. That’s just a wild feeling and thing to have.
Anthony: The response we’ve gotten has been beyond my wildest thoughts.
Christian: It’s so funny, because everyone that I’ve ever met that’s in a hardcore or beat down band, they’re like the nicest people ever.
Anthony: Jiu-Jitsu’s just about everyone having fun.
Christian: Having fun and knocking motherfuckers out!
What are Jiu-Jitsu’s plans for the future?
Riley: North Carolina tour.
Christian: I want to expose Charlotte to the hardcore scene, more than the punk scene. I want to try to go out and play with other NC hardcore bands, ‘cause there are some huge NC hardcore bands. Eyes Wide Shut, Ends of Sanity, Fading Signal, Regence, Advent. Shanked.
Josh: I wanna bring Demiurge. Warning Order has gotta be on there too.
Josh: I just graduated from Mitchell, and it’s a two-year culinary degree. Best food in the band comes from me. [Laughs] I’d love to do a cookout at one of the shows.
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Jiu-Jitsu’s 2023 demo, Violent Demonstration, is available now on Spotify and Bandcamp.
The band will be playing The Milestone on February 7th as part of the 2023 Heavyweights Tour.
fuelthescene.com 