Your Source for NPR News & Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Viking's Choice: The Year In The Loud And The Weird

From top left, clockwise: DƠWN, Sarah Louise, Pure Disgust, Oathbreaker.
Courtesy of the artists
From top left, clockwise: DƠWN, Sarah Louise, Pure Disgust, Oathbreaker.

All year long in my Viking's Choice column, I attempt to simultaneously crush and widen the ears of All Songs Considered fans. As is now tradition, Bob Boilen and I get together on this last show of the year to discuss all things metallic, psychedelic, synthetic and exploratory. You'll hear about a 20-year-old metal band's most feral album ever, synth artists imagining a dystopian society and mimicking ocean waves, an Afro-futurist cutting the dance floor into cubist shapes and more.

We also announce — spoiler alert — that I will be joining All Songs Considered full-time in 2017 as a writer, producer and contributing guest on the show. So expect a sonic wrench in your podcast feed from time to time, or at least an attempt to convince everybody that Young Thug is a total pop deviant.

If this is a realm you wish to enter on the regular, it's best to follow me on Twitter and Bandcamp. I've also updated my oh-so-official Spotify playlist with over 100 of my favorite songs of the year. --Lars Gotrich

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Listen to the Viking's Choice playlist, subscribe to the newsletter.
Related Stories