Panchiko

On July 21st, 2016, a user on 4chan’s /mu/ board posted a photo of a mysterious CD they’d found at a record store in Nottingham, UK: a rough-worn demo titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, purportedly released in 2000 by four musicians: Owain, Andy, Shaun, and John. The listener uploaded the ripped audio—the recordings sounded like they were plagued with disc rot—to file-sharing sites, and later YouTube, where they began circulating among internet music circles. The record’s sensationalist appeal was multifold. Was this an honest-to-God ’90s curio? A prank hatched by internet-savvy teens? An internet experiment in nostalgia, in the spirit of vaporwave? Nobody knew. So the Panchiko hive mobilized, gathering on subreddits and discord servers, examining every square inch of the packaging for potential clues, and even calling the Nottingham record store where D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L had allegedly sprung up in the first place.