The Panchiko song that inspired the album title was written in the late 90s, when nu-metal was enjoying mainstream success. “And then we weren’t having to make the stuff, we were just sort of finding things and presenting it to them: ‘Here you go, here’s something we did 20 years ago.’”ĭ>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, despite its name, is not death metal. “We had all this stuff and then there was an audience,” Davies says. Davies had been keeping much of their music on CDs and minidiscs carefully tucked away in wallets for years (despite no longer owning a CD player), but there were some songs they had recorded that none of the band members even had any more – they had to ask around to see if any friends had them. They started with D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L and then began adding more. Shocked that they suddenly had fans wanting to hear their old band, the members of Panchiko gradually began to put more songs on Bandcamp, then Spotify, and then later on cassettes, vinyl and, of course, CDs. It took four years before Davies, Wright and Shaun Ferreday, 40, who plays bass in the band, finally learned a dedicated group of internet sleuths were desperately searching for them. From there, the songs and the search for their provenance spread online, “on Reddit forums, Discord channels, private chats and YouTube”, according to a Vice article on the global effort to find Panchiko. In 2016, someone found Panchiko’s 2000 CD, titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, at a thrift store in the UK, but was unable to track down any information about them online. Photograph: Tom Platinum Morley/Courtesy of Panchiko Panchiko play Metronome in Nottingham, England, in December 2021. “And I think the following has kind of grown exponentially even since then, and it feels even more unbelievable now, to be honest.” “It felt quite unbelievable then,” says Wright. The band members spoke occasionally but didn’t see each other often – mostly at friends’ weddings – until an internet mystery unexpectedly brought them back together in 2021. Panchiko disbanded not long after the 2001 show. Wright said they played “to people milling about, buying a hotdog and staring at you weirdly”. The last time Panchiko played a show was 20 years prior, in 2001, at a festival in a tiny town called Sutton-in-Ashfield, and there wasn’t much meaningful eye contact. “When you play to nobody” – which they had done – “if you make eye contact with someone in the bar, they might not want to meet your gaze,” he says with a laugh. “People knew the words to the songs, which is crazy,” says Andrew Wright, 40, who also plays guitar.ĭavies remarked on the joy of making eye contact with people at a gig like that.
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