“Watch for the false and shoddy, stay within the safety of your good inclinations. And soon you will find the figure of mind, the value of your fellow man.”

– Wastoid, “The Magic Journey”

A man-sized gothic cross shoots lasers out from behind a severed goat’s head (severed from the rest of its theatre-prop body). It’s mounted proudly on a stick and strobing lights from its gleaming eyes through mechanized smoke that swirls the stage as four individuals, draped in capes and clad in leather, prep and tweak their instruments to the unmistakable sounds of Jesus being nailed to his cross (a tasteful lift from the 1970 original studio cast recording of “The Crucifixion” from the classic rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar). A man center stage raises a medieval-style broadsword as a barely decipherable but no doubt demonic voice intrudes upon Jesus’ cries and jarringly grumbles ominous invocations of the Devil, Rock and Roll, and God knows what else.

This memorable scene is from the Ruba Club last fall, and the band on stage is Wastoid, who, after a 20-year hiatus, returned to resurrect their over-the-top, fun-filled heavy metal classics (which were anachronistic even the first time around), for their diehard devotees, and this September 13, the second installment of Wastoid’s long-awaited reunion is scheduled to ignite another stage—this time, at PhilaMOCA, Finney & Son’s former mausoleum showroom on 12th & Spring Garden. 

Wastoid formed in Philadelphia “17 years too late,” a comment Wastoid bassist Sophy DiPinto laughingly recalls hearing heckled from the crowd while opening up for Ronnie James Dio in 1997 during the band’s inaugural days. “That’s such a weirdly specific number to call out!” she continued. The math that patron had conducted referred to what’s known as the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal,” a genre associated with the traditional metal style of bands like Diamond Head, Angel Witch, and Saxon who emerged in the mid to late 70’s and swiftly spread its influence through Europe and abroad. Metal giants like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and the Scorpions also grew from this movement and continued to dominate through the 80’s until the rise of early 90’s grunge and alternative rock. At that point, the bombastics of metal, in their tight leather and epic theatrics, had fallen out of favor with the new prevalence of the grunge aesthetic.

“That was a tough time,” frontman Chris DiPinto reflected, following Wastoid’s Ruba Club reunion show. Chris, with his wife and bandmate Sophy DiPinto sat across from me at the dining table in their lovely home, which, by its style and decor, charmingly signals the artistic creativity of its inhabitants. “In 1996, metal was at its bottom,” Chris explained. While all of their contemporaries in the local Philly rock scene were playing minimalist indie and alternative rock in casual, jeans-and-sneakers anti-costumes, Wastoid formed to fill the void for wayward metal fans, like myself, who were either born in the wrong time, or left pining for the thrash of yesteryears. 

Another one of those wayward metal fans was major-label artist and drum tech/engineer pro Larry “The Kid” Horn from Philadelphia. “Grunge didn’t affect Wastoid,” he explained to me during a recent phone call. “Wastoid didn’t give a shit. They weren’t trying to get signed, they were just having fun and people still went to their shows! They didn’t give a shit what trends were happening,” he recalled. Larry, a friend of the band who has made his living touring the world several times over, working with Van Halen, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Biohazard (you get the idea, the list goes on), shared with me his fond memories of Wastoid shows. “You went to the gig and you knew, in the audience, you weren’t gonna deal with assholes, you knew you weren’t gonna deal with dickheads, everyone was just there to have fun and I think that was the primary goal of [Wastoid], they just wanted to have a blast and the audience was receptive to that,” Larry explained.

Wastoid quickly grew a following, making a name for themselves as the preeminent local theatre opener for their classic metal idols who’d all packed the Spectrum at one point or another in the 80’s. But it was in an alley behind a South Philly art gallery in the early aughts that my teenage self first saw Wastoid perform. It was a reception for artist Thom Lessner’s exhibition with outdoor live music on a beautiful spring day. As a pre-corp School of Rock teen, fellow students and I performed a short set of cover songs, hand-picked by Thom—classic favorites like Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly,” and Guns n’ Roses’ “Rocket Queen.” After our set, I watched this badass band roll their giant amps up the bumpy alley and unpack these crazy pointy guitars unlike anything I’d ever seen before (designed and built by Chris DiPinto himself). This band looked more like those NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) bands I’d been watching on grainy bootleg VHS tapes than any band I’d ever seen up close, in person. I remember leather pants and bullet belts, and once they started to play, the singer ceremoniously lifted an actual broadsword to the sky and I was hooked. 

Wastoid played authentic heavy metal with the energy and precision of any NWOBHM band, as if they’d walked out of a time machine sent from 1979 North London. Seeing Sophy play was particularly inspiring to me as a junior metalhead. I’d never seen a woman perform this kind of metal and so clearly pulling no less musical weight than any of her bandmates. I got to tell her as much four years ago when Chris contacted me to make stained glass windows (my day job) for their house. I of course knew who he was, he’s the famous Chris DiPinto, of DiPinto Guitars, Creem Circus, and (sound the trumpets) Wastoid. I played it cool, I didn’t tell him how Wastoid was my favorite Philly band as a teen, or that I’d set my MySpace profile to autoplay their song “Let it Rock” in the background, or that their Say Your Prayers EP has survived the CD players of all three cars I’ve owned since then, or how I had unsuccessfully asked them in 2014 to reunite and play my 30th birthday party. Instead, I met him on the porch, measured the window openings like the professional I am and talked glass—until Sophy came out and I instantly started fangirling. “You’re the bass player from Wastoid! I love Wastoid!” She and Chris looked at me shocked and amused, “Wow, I didn’t expect to hear that today!” Sophy said then.

“Sophy didn’t wanna do it at first!” Chris revealed about Wastoid’s return. Sophy confessed that she hadn’t touched her bass much since Wastoid’s last show at the Trocadero in 2004, when they went out on a high, having delivered a super-tight and explosive set opening for Michael Schenker and Uli Jon Roth of Scorpions and UFO fame. 

“Well, you know, we stopped doing Wastoid, had 2 kids, [Chris] started other bands, I was busy with my books, and we were working, raising kids,” Sophy explained.  

“I told her, ‘Think of all the women and girls who could say, oh my god i watched you play in a heavy metal band! You have to do it for that reason alone!’ That’s how I convinced her,” Chris said.

Sophy recalled going to see the Ramones with opener Joan Jett at the Tower Theatre in Upper Darby as a teen. She called it “a light switch turning on” when she saw Jett play live. “It really is such a boys club. It’s a lot better now, but back then…” Sophy reflected, “I just think of going into 8th street music—”

“Oh they were so mean,” Chris affirmed.

“‘You buying this for your boyfriend?’ they’d say,” Sophy recalled. When I asked her what it was like to pick her bass up again, Sophy answered, “It was pretty easy!”

“I was surprised,” Chris admitted, “I was so worried, but then we started playing the songs, and I was like, ‘Oh! You have it! You’re totally playing them!” he continued.

“I mean, I know the songs, they’re tricky, but I remember them. It’s like knowing the words to a song that you listened to a thousand times, even if they’re really weird, you don’t forget them,” Sophy reasoned.

I had to know, what finally convinced them to get back together after all these years? Chris said we can thank Larry the Kid for getting that ball rolling. One of the hurdles for a potential Wastoid reunion was finding a drummer since Ben Bower now had other commitments. So Larry put a bug in Chris’ ear, “I just kept telling him, ‘Wastoid was the shit, and if you ever decide to get something back together, I’d love to be your drummer!’” When Larry the Kid offers to play drums in your band, you’d be foolish not to take him up on it.

“We figured it was now or never, We have to do it now before we get too old. If we don’t do it now, we’re just never going to do it. We have the songs, we gotta do it one more time,” Chris recalled thinking. He recruited friend and guitarist Joe Boyle and they began rehearsing the guitar parts together. Their enthusiasm mounted with increasing momentum as they brought new life to songs like “Mountain of Fire” and “Leif Erickson Overture,” but, unfortunately, with his home and work obligations, joining Wastoid would not ultimately be in the cards for Larry the Kid, but Sophy, Chris, and Joe had already come too far to give up. 

Enter Chris’ childhood friend to take up the reins, or sticks, rather—Neal Bloom, who played drums in Chris’ first band, Cloven Hoof, when they were in the 8th grade. Chris realized the music of Wastoid was bigger than any one member, current or former. Any lineup would always come second to the music, and those songs deserve to be heard and enjoyed. “I just love the songs so much and I wanna play them again! I always said I would have been the audience for this band had it already existed!” Chris declared, “When no one else was doing it, I had to put it together myself!” During the years of their hiatus though, it became evident that no other bands were fully delivering that unique Wastoid-caliber magic. “Some have come close, but not exactly, so I guess we’ve gotta do another show! Right?”

“I had a feeling it would go well,” Sophy intimated, reflecting on last year's comeback show. “Chris just put his heart and soul into it, and it was definitely a good showing. That makes a huge difference, especially when they’re responding to your music. There’s nothing like it, I mean, you can have that many people there, but if they’re all just like sitting down and talking or just sitting back at the bar, that’s just… [we all grimace and shudder at the thought of being background noise to patrons’ conversations] But it was a good crowd and they were all into it…when I saw that there were people there, I was like alright, at least, even if we don’t play well, it’ll still be a fun night. But then I think we kinda nailed it,” Sophy said, and I agree, they did nail it.

“It’s so much harder to play for 30 people in a room that should hold 100,” Chris said wisely. “It’s so much better [when the room is full]; you feel so loved! Thirty people at the Fire’s ok, but in a room the size of the Ruba to very few people, I mean, we’ve done it, we’ve looked out to very few people and thought, ‘I can’t believe we wrote all these songs, brought this cross, and did all this stuff, and there’s nobody here—and we think it’s so good!’ But it happens, you play your heart out and no one’s there to see it. We all do it, we’ve all done it. Somehow we get through it,” Chris said. “It’s worth doing every show!” 

“I can remember lugging our gear around, carrying that cross everywhere, and people would look and just be like, ‘Is this a joke?’ And this is way too much work to be a joke!” Sophy added.

“They were just always really good, fun-loving people—and kick ass musicians on top of that. That was the combination that made it work, no pretense, just everything you wanted out of a fucking band, they were just awesome and so good live,” Larry told me. He was bummed he wouldn’t be able to join the band, but was excited for the world to once again experience the joy of Wastoid. On Wastoid’s return, Larry calls them “a super breath of fresh air.” He said, “The way I see it, the world could use more bands like that today. The world got super serious,” he said of the pandemic and increasing socio-political turmoil. “But when you go to a Wastoid show, that shit is left at the door. They’re a great old rock show that leaves the shit in life outside so you can lose yourself for a bit watching a cool metal band,” Larry said. This sentiment is not to minimize the world's problems, it's to highlight the importance of art, entertainment, and community, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty. 

“It’s so fun!” Chris said, “Some people don’t get how our [style of] metal is fun, like everybody’s got to be so serious about metal, but we’re serious about having fun!”

Today, Sophy is a successful and sought-after fine art bookbinder, whose unique and fascinating pieces can be found at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Store as well as other shops, markets, and online vendors. Chris is a well-renowned luthier with his own line of guitars, played by such notables as Cheap Trick, Dick Dale, Lil’ Wayne, LA Guns, Adam Sandler, and Kurt Vile to name a few. Together, Chris and Sophy own DiPinto Guitars, a full-service retail and repair shop on Girard Ave, in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia with regular clients such as Chrissy Hynde and Dinosaur Jr. Chris and Sophy have two kids, 19 and 17 years old who, until this reunion, knew nothing at all about Wastoid. “We don’t talk too much about it, but I’ve seen them both represent by wearing Wastoid shirts to school,” Chris told me, referring to the iconic flying-V-through-the-ears shirt, designed by Jim Krewson, who also designed the album art work for their 2024 vinyl reissue release of their EP Say Your Prayers available now from Creep Records. 

See Wastoid perform again this September 13 at PhilaMOCHA with supporting acts Gibbous Moon and Grozov. Visit PhilaMOCHA for details.