Band:	Chepang
Album:	Chatta
Style:	Grindcore
Release date:	May 22, 2020
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Pahilo Bhet
02. Andho Manis
03. Bhramit
04. Hantakari
05. Pakhandi
06. Adhunikata
07. Sano Dhukur
08. Kalil
09. Samajik Suchana
10. Barood
11. Murkha
12. Antim Bhet
13. Trishna
14. Pakhandi [Labi remix]
15. Chatta [Wreckless Crew remix]
16. Samajik Suchana [Foseal remix]
17. Chatta [Joao X Marcello remix]

Nepal's most popular jazzgrind quintet (probably) returns with a blindingly fast and blindingly bright selection of headache-inducing acute angles for the discerning musical masochist.

You might be wondering how on earth it takes three years to write and record just under 17 minutes of music. I'll give you a hint: it's got something to do with that "jazzgrind" descriptor. Yes, it's hard work turning grindcore into something that A) stands out from the crowd and B) slams with the saxophone as much as black metal does these days; Chatta is as loud and disorienting as that technicolor-vomit album cover, although the music isn't quite as sickening as that.

Chepang's debut, Dadhelo (A Tale Of Winter), poked its nose into unexplored realms here and there, stomping through grindy trends with some unusual expressions of musicality and bonhomie. The 2017 grindcore vintage was wicked stacked, though, and I think it's not necessarily my own fault that Chepang had never crossed my path until a few weeks ago when I received a customary "REVIEW THIS" message from Radu. Chatta takes greater liberties with its composition and instrumentation, introducing the aforementioned sax to the mix and transforming the basic beats of grindcore into lurching cacophonies of pick sliding, impromptu shredding, and unconventional time signatures. They're a little more down-to-earth than, say, Psudoku, but Chepang are clearly intent on clawing out their own foothold in the expanding frontiers of bizarre grind, and Chatta is already strong enough to land them the attention they'll need to do it.

If Lightning Bolt extrapolates Melt-Banana's piercing noise punk side, Chepang takes the arrhythmic grindcore side to its own logical extreme. That means you'll get a super obnoxious 15 seconds like "Hantakari" followed up by the Antigamarole that is "Pakhandi", and then two closing tracks that together take up eight minutes of the album with unintelligible avalanches of squealing woodwinds and harsh noise; Chatta follows the typical patterns of repetitive riff evisceration that make grindcore what it is, but Chepang hits those chords with just the right amount of dissonance to make the experience more uncomfortable than it should be (in a good way, of course, because describing grindcore is dumb). The album is always seconds away from (or seconds into) deviating wildly from the anticipated tempo or rhythm, and for split seconds it even drops into a heavy beatdown or takes on a more sinister heaviness that come as effective surprises.

There's only so much to say about a 17-minute album like Chatta and I'm worried that I might have to come up with a whole other batch of things to say next year when the Metal Storm Awards 2020 roll around, so let's just cap it here and say that Chatta is an album to familiarize yourself with if you want to hear more evidence that grindcore is a simultaneously great and stupid genre of music.