© 2024 KOSU
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Viking's Choice: VHÖL, 'Dispatch'

VHÖL's contribution to the 2016 Adult Swim Singles Program is "Dispatch." It's now available to download.
VHÖL's contribution to the 2016 Adult Swim Singles Program is "Dispatch." It's now available to download.

For some, summer means swimming pools and drinks with tiny umbrellas. For others, summer means tallboys and sweaty bodies engaged in what can only be called a crusty display of full-contact Bacchanalia. "Dispatch" is the meanest and bloodiest VHÖL track to date, from a metal band that normally liquefies thrash into T-1000 badassery.

Charging headfirst with a grunting, galloping riff from guitarist John Cobbett and bassist Sigrid Sheie's grueling tone — and matched by Aesop Dekker's muscular drumming — this is the Bay Area's band most direct tribute to the punk backbone of its work. "It was our little nod to Pooch-era Discharge," Cobbett writes of the U.K. heavy-metal hardcore-punk band. But it wouldn't be VHÖL if it weren't a little cosmic, as vocalist Mike Scheidt claws and shrieks his way through Cobbett's alien wails. "The lyrics are loosely a sci-fi theme on killing machines sent by the powers-that-be to do their dirty work from a distance," Scheidt writes NPR. "With drones currently being used for that exact purpose, it's not quite so sci-fi, really."

This is the second track available from the 2016 Adult Swim Singles Program — with free, downloadable MP3s scheduled all summer from fellow headbangers like Sannhet, but also from D∆WN, Jenny Hval, Earl Sweatshirt, Against Me!, Run The Jewels and many more.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Listen to the Viking's Choice playlist, subscribe to the newsletter.
KOSU is nonprofit and independent. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Your support makes this news available to everyone.

Give today. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference.