The story of the British ’90s band Panchiko is a crazy one.It’s almost inaccurate to say that Panchiko have been “rediscovered,” since they were never really discovered in the first place.
In the late ’90s, a few teenagers in Nottingham got together to make music that sounded a bit like what Radiohead were doing at the time.In 2000, they self-released an EP called D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L.
It was just a few dozen CD-Rs, sent out to get labels interested in the group, but nobody took the bait.Panchiko started recording another EP, but then the broke up.
All the band members moved on and lived adult lives.Then, the kids found D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, and they loved it.
In 2016, someone found a copy of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L at a secondhand shop in Nottingham and posted it on 4chan.Nobody knew anything about this group, whose members were only listed by first name in the liner notes.
The music itself has been distorted just because the CD itself was old and corroded.That sense of mystery probably drew people to the EP, which became a key example of the phenomenon known as lostwave.
In 2020, someone found Panchiko leader Owain Davies on Facebook, and the band members learned that their long-forgotten music was suddenly finding a fanbase.The other three were no longer in contact with their old drummer, and he still might not know what’s going on with his old band.
In any case, Panchiko have since released a few different deluxe reissues of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, and Panchiko have blown up online, to the point where they now have over a million monthly Spotify listeners.Panchiko got back together and played to crowds much larger than anything they’d ever hoped to see in their first incarnation.
They also started recording more music, and they released their proper debut album Failed At Math(s) in 2023.Their popularity has continued to explode.
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