I’ve always loved the brevity of grindcore. The best grind records get in, level a building before you’ve finished heating up your leftovers, and get out. As such, spilling hundreds of words about a new album in the genre — even a good one! — just feels kinda wrong.

Which brings us to the new Chepang album, Jhyappa. It’s good!

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…oh, you want more? [sighs, gestures-at-opening-paragraph, sighs again] Alright, fiiiiiine. A bit more, then.

Chepang — from Kathmandu by way of Queens — has been appointment listening for me ever since they blew my damn mind at Maryland Deathfest… christ, eight years ago, now. The quintet injects an impressive amount of sonic experimentation into their waste-laying: spoken-word passages here, flourishes of traditional Nepali music over there, and so on.

That all culminated with 2023’s Swatta: a sprawling, 29-song, 49-minute grindcore odyssey that boasted synth and brass passages, explorations into shoegaze and post-rock, and even collaborations with folks like Colin Marston and Dirk Verbeuren. It had the same effect on the genre that Absolute Elsewhere would on death metal a year later. In short, it was fuckin’ great.

Which is why, two years later, Jhyappa can’t help but feel like it’s getting a bit of a bum deal. It’s nine tracks in a brisk, 18-minute package, and it’s good! Maybe even great! Quite frankly, I’m struggling to think of even one thing I really dislike about it. Its only crime is that it feels a bit like being whiplashed back into the present after getting a preview of a glorious future.

The positives? It’s got, without a doubt, the thickest, meatiest sound Chepang has ever laid to tape. With producer Kevin Bernsten back behind the desk for the first time since 2017’s Dadhelo – A Tale of Wildfire, it feels like we’re not only witnessing the band razing a building around us, but also feeling the weight of every brick crashing down on us.

And even within the album’s more limited scope, the band still manages to mix things up sonically. Early on in the album, for example, the band sandwiches the conventionally grindy track, “Shakti (Force),” in between two others — “Parichaya 2.0 (Intro)” and “Gatichad” — where guitarist Kshitiz Moktan injects a noticeable amount of groove into his riffage. Later, “Drivya Shakhti” opens with a minute-or-so of absolute ferocity before slowing things down and transforming into a more deliberate, but no less devastating, beast.

Ah, fuck. Here I am, 400 words into a review I promised I’d keep brief. Let’s wrap by saying: set your thoughts on Swatta aside for a bit. Chepang’s still firing on all cylinders throughout Jhyappa, and you should absolutely give this one a listen.

Keep it heavy,
—Dan

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Jhyappa will be available May 23, 2025, via Relapse Records. For more information on Chepang, visit the band’s Facebook page.