With a grindcore band like CHEPANG, it’s hard to keep up. Hailing from Queens, New York, by way of Kathmandu, Nepal (the noise guy’s roots are Colombian), CHEPANG has never been your by-the-numbers band. They guys call their music “immigrindcore”: They use samples from Nepali pop songs. They sing in Nepali. They embrace their immigrant identities. 

The lyrics on Jhyappa, the new album coming out on Relapse Records (due out May 23rd on LP/CD/CS/Digital) are “hardcore Nepalese,” guitarist Kshitiz Moktan says. “Even sometimes I don’t understand.” Google Translate can’t handle the lyrics either. Regardless, “this record is more, I would say personal” than CHEPANG’s other records, Moktan says, about “trying to relearn everything about yourself” and “releasing all your negative energy inside you.” 

Pre-order the album at orcd.co/chepang

The designs of the band’s album covers are anything but standard death metal or grindcore. Jhyappa’s cover art (by Masato Chaos) is based on self-immolation. But not “about any religion or any government; it’s against yourself.” Everyone has their struggles, in their own head and in life, but the only one that can fix that is yourself, Moktan explains. “One has to be closer to one’s self spiritually to defeat this and come out victorious,” and this theme is depicted on the cover: “the self-immolation against your own inner self,” he says.

NYC is referenced on the cover also. “All of us have lived half of our lives here. We live here, we see everything, positive and negative, so we wanted to have some kind of New York” represented on the cover, Moktan says. On the streets and in the subways, the guys always see “many people of different colors and races with their own life and story to tell. These are dynamic cues in life and serve as a motivation and also pride to be a part of this big city where diversity is everything. A melting pot of cultures,” he says, that are metaphors relevant in the album art and the songs.

Jhyappa is “a really personal record,” says Moktan. When crafting it, the guys decided, “We will try to express what we can personally that we have not explained in other records, what we are dealing with, what we want to achieve.” That includes “the ups and downs of living the life of an immigrant where you are trying to find yourself, trying to survive with the day to day of life, be it financially or psychologically,” he says.

Musically, the guys said, “Let’s spin it back” to the first 7” from 2016, Lathi Charge, and go full circle—old school CHEPANG. Jhyappa is similar to that first EP sonically and structurally, but “I think definitely it’s the most metal record we have ever written; that I can say.” It’s also the most accessible and digestible, he adds.

Jhyappa is CHEPANG’s debut album for Relapse Records, nine tracks in a brutal package under 20 minutes long. The song “Shakti” (“Force” in Nepali) is a cover of the Japanese band FORCE. Kevin Bernsten (FULL OF HELL, GENOCIDE PACT, ILSA) recorded and mixed the album at Developing Nations, with the drums tracked at The Magpie Cage Studio. “We wanted more of a live sound, the way we are, raw kind of thing, and we pushed for more, like, room sound from the drums” and Bernsten delivered, says Moktan. James Plotkin (KHANATE, NADJA) handled mastering.

Keep up with CHEPANG if you can with Jhyappa.