Music / Panchiko

Panchiko are an electro-rock/indie rock group from Nottingham, England, consisting of Owain on vocals, Andy on guitar, Shaun on bass, and John on drums. The band recorded two EPs: The four-song Deathmetal (stylized as D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L), released in 2000 in a limited quantity of around 30 to 40 CD-R copies, and the three-song Kicking Cars, released in 2001. They disappeared shortly afterwards but re-appeared in the public eye in 2020.

Not much is known about their history, and the EPs remained lost in obscurity for several years. It wouldn't be until July 21, 2016 that Deathmetal started gaining attention: a user on 4chan's /mu/ board published a post about the EP, which they found at an Oxfam charity shop and were unable to find any sort of information regarding it on the internet. What piqued people's attention was the sound quality of the EP; the disc was heavily affected by disc rot, so the music on it (a hybrid of indie rock, Dream Pop, and Trip Hop) had a heavily compressed and crushed sound to it. To many, however, this only added to the mysterious quality of both the music and the band itself. Word got around about the Deathmetal EP, and pretty soon what was once just an obscure side project of some secondary schoolers had gained a sizable cult fanbase.

Nevertheless, it seemed very unlikely that any sort of official confirmation of the project's existence would happen. The CD only listed the band members' (relatively common) first names, making tracking them very difficult. That changed on January 31, 2020, when someone managed to get into contact with Owain and Andy, both of whom provided more info about the project and confirmed that the data-crushed sound was unintentional (though they actually prefer the sound of the circulating rips over the official masters). This has miraculously helped solve one of the bigger music-related mysteries on the internet.

On February 16, 2020, Deathmetal was officially re-released in its original, non-crushed form, with the bit-rot affected MP3s and the tracks from Kicking Cars added as bonuses. Later that year, two brand new recordings from the band was released, as well as a whole album's worth of original demos entitled Ferric Oxide.

On May 5, 2023, following a string of sell out live shows in both the UK and the States, Panchiko released their official debut album, Failed at Math(s).

Tropes related to Panchiko and/or Deathmetal:

• Author Appeal: The artwork for the EP is lifted directly from certain manga and anime series. The band's name is also a pun on pachinko, a type of gambling game common in Japan.
• Careful with That Axe: Owain pulls this off on "Kicking Cars".
• Digital Destruction: The sound of the band's first EP, from the then-only circulating rip of it online, has a heavily distorted and compressed sound due to the 4chan user's CD succumbing to disc rot.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: The lyrics are rather difficult to make out through the distortion.
• Non-Indicative Name: D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L is not a Death Metal record in the slightest.
• Shout-Out: The band's music and artwork contains plenty of shout-outs to anime and manga. For example, "Laputa" is inspired by the Studio Ghibli film Castle in the Sky, whilst "D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L" namedrops Roy Fokker from Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The cover shown above was taken from a panel◊ from Mint na Bokura.
  • "D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L" uses a repeated Spoken Word in Music clip of someone saying "Don't play the track", which is taken from an audio file ripped from Burning Rangers - if you were to put the Burning Rangers game disc into an audio CD player, the first thing you'd hear was one of the voice actors from the game reading a warning not to do that if you don't want to risk damaging your stereo system.
    • The lo-fi violins in the intro of the same song are taken from the opening credits to Dr. Strangelove.