Photo by cottonbro studio
Two of my favorite things in this whole wide world are thrifting and archiving music. Every time I stop at a thrift store, I always make sure to thumb through hundreds of the dusty CDs to find something interesting. Every so often, there’s a hidden gem somewhere deep within that bin of discs, probably sandwiched between a Bon Jovi compilation disc or some issue of “Now That’s What I Call Music.”
It was July 2016 when an anonymous user on 4chan’s /mu/ board posted an interesting-looking CD they had discovered at a flea market in the United Kingdom. The album cover was just a still from an obscure late-90s manga, complete with an equally intriguing title, “Death Metal,” (stylized as “D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L”).
4chan is notorious for its unserious nature and tendency of its users to lie about the most basic of things; however, many users were quick to give the anonymous buyer the benefit of the doubt. Within minutes, many chronically online users came out of the woodwork hounding the user to upload a rip of the CD to the board.
There was a problem however: the CD had been neglected for almost two decades by this point and was severely deteriorated. After an extended period, many cheap optical discs will rot away from oxidation, which had ravaged the user’s copy of “Death Metal” almost to the point of no return. While the music was still audible, it was covered in fuzzy distortion, adding a somewhat creepy element to the already melancholic music.
The user uploaded the entire EP sometime later, and what many had expected to be some kind of noise rock or J-pop creation turned out to be echoey, lo-fi trip-hop almost reminiscent of Portishead’s “Dummy.” The title track was melancholic and introspective, taking influences from popular Midwest emo bands at the time. Though hard to make out clearly, the instrumentation ranged from sparse and intimate to grandiose and triumphant. The EP’s lush sound piqued the interest of thousands across the world.
Almost immediately, the songs spread like wildfire. Up until this point, almost no one had ever heard of Panchiko, “Death Metal” and its 4chan thread seemed to be the only record of this band and EP ever existing.
Things really picked up once “Death Metal” became part of the lost media canon. The “lost media” community is a dedicated group of internet users who spend their time sleuthing the internet to find obscure media of times gone by. The search went on for almost four years until one of the band members had been tracked down on Facebook.
Unbeknownst to the former band members, their pet project from the late 1990s had gained a massive cult following across the internet. When lead vocalist and guitarist Owain Davies was contacted, he was initially confused by such a strange request. Panchiko had called it quits 19 years ago, without so much as a murmur of their music since then. Quickly, Davies and the rest of the band would discover just how large their one and only release had gotten.
Fortunately, Davies had a copy of the EP stored on a hard drive, and quickly made it available to the public. After four years of searching, the songs were finally found without any added noise. Now that the band had been found, many wondered what would come next from the former members. Quickly after “Death Metal” was reissued and re-released alongside several other unreleased tracks, Panchiko reformed and started to release new material. In 2021, the band performed their first show in 20 years, accompanied by a new drummer and guitarist. A year later, they would embark on their first tour in the United States.
It’s now been about four years since Panchiko’s music was found and released, and the band has been making up for their absence ever since. Last year, the group released its first full-length album since 2000 and embarked on several international tours. Their story often fuels thousands, including myself, to dig through the used CD bin at Goodwill for just a little longer.