6/30/25 - D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L

★★★★★
We're starting our weekly album reviews off strong with panchikos first album : D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L . Released initially as an ep in 2000, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L (and the band) recieved little recognition until the cd was discovered by a 4chan user in a charity shop in Nottingham years after its release. D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L the album is actually a combination of the original D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L ep and a second unreleased ep, kicking cars, so we are technically reviewing both!
In my opinion, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L remains panchikos best release to date. 'Failed At Maths' and 'Ginkgo' are both very good without a doubt, but theres a kind of real rawness to D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L that isn't captured in their other two albums. It reminds me a little of Lorde's 'Pure Heroine', not in its sound but in the feeling it has. I think its most likely due to the band having been teenagers when they made it, and teenage art always seems to have something thats missing from music by older artists.
Overall, i really love this album. I heard it live for the first time earlier this month and it genuinely changed my life, I don't think I'll ever be the same.
FAV SONG: STABILISERS FOR BIG BOYS

CAN BAD PEOPLE MAKE GOOD MUSIC?

A take I see online often enough is that if someone is a bad person or does bad things, they are also a bad artist. While I do believe that if an artist is a bad person (ie - racist, abusive, etc) you shouldn't continue to consume their art in a way that benefits them, I think the idea that any artist who does bad things is a bad artist only makes it easier for these people to get away with doing bad things without any consequence. Courtney Love, for example. Courtney Love did and said racist things during her career (which, in my opinion, is very very over) and that is enough for me to put her firmly in my mind as a bad person. The excuse of her having been struggling with addiction doesn't mean anything, because being an addict doesnt force you to do or say racist things, at most it makes you more likely to say the things you already believe. I also love Hole, and they are to this day one of if not my number one favorite rock band. I can recognize that Courtney Love is a terrible person and also acknowledge that she is an extremely talented artist whos art directly impacted the other music I enjoy and continues to inspire a lot of modern female rock bands. The claim that bad people make bad art comes across to me as a way to avoid any serious conversations about the kind of music controversial figures can make. It reminds me of a lyric from Kendrick Lamar's 'Mortal Man', where he says, "That n**** gave us "Billie Jean, " you say he touched those kids?" By claiming that bad people make bad music, you are also insinuating that someone cannot be a bad person if their music is good enough, which makes it much easier to avoid the fact that your fav is very capable of these same actions that would make you consider someone else a bad person.
Another view of this is when an artist makes music that directly reflects their poor views, but that music is still good. A song being good is very rarely just about its lyricism, but more about how it sounds, if its catchy. Negative XP, another musician I like, represents this to me. Negative XP's lyrics are misogynistic, full stop. He is an incel who makes music for other incels and unfortunately, that music sounds really good. However, graphically misogynistic lyrics are not something special to 'Incelcore', as his style of music is dubbed, as almost all popular music written by men has an undercurrent of misogyny. I don't think this makes their music bad necessarily, but it does prove how deeply sexist views are engrained in our society if men can get away with calling women whores and bitches casually and still have their music played on the radio.
In short, I do think bad people can make good music and I think they very frequently do. Trying to claim that an artists music becomes bad when you realize that they're a bad person only makes it easier for other artists to get away with doing the same things because you will like their sound enough to ignore it.