I’m from Kentucky, the heart of Bluegrass and Country music, sort of… I think Nashville would disagree and probably Oklahoma, Kansas and any other state that cuddles up next to the southern states would as well. But to say I grew up around Country Music is an understatement, for years I was immersed in it.

So when I learned that VHS was releasing a Spaghetti Western style Death Metal album I was instantly interested and I’m not disappointed at all. For a Few Riffs More is fucking great, a Death Metal homage to the glory days of Western cinema handled in the best possible way.

VHS aren’t strangers to doing incredibly fun, themed albums, Deep Gashes and Long Lashes, last year’s mighty Quest for the Mighty Riff (both of which were my AOTY) were both delicious slabs of brutality delivered in fantastical ways and For a Few Riffs More continues in that vein.

“Django” begins the saga on a killer riff (get it), it’s swank and it swaggers like nobody’s business, add in some dark western keyboard harmonies, and with that VHS has gone country. It’s Death Metal Country so it’s better than whatever swill is being called Country music today.

“(Death Metal) Rides a Horse” starts with another twangy riff,  there’s enough twang on this record to make Duane Eddie blush, and it’s a hard-hitting groover, a lone rider on a sun-baked desert.

The songs merge into each other, connected by that twang guitar and the pounding drums “Dead People Don’t Need a Leader” picks up the tension that sort of permeates through the album; it adds to the Western Cinema theme, there are blast beats galore on this album and when VHS use the blast it’s something else. Most bands will start with a blast, but here it’s used to punctuate the moment. Their songs tell the individual pieces of a crazy Western movie.

“Cutthroats” has a Black Metal feel with the keyboards punching in bursts in the chorus bits. It’s fast, and it utilizes the blast to maximum effect. It segues into one of my favorite tracks “A Grave for Every Bullet” with the coolest lyric ever “when he draws on you, trade your pistol for a coffin”.

There are so many killer moments, so many killer riffs, and there’s the “Instrumental” with its Lynryd Skynryd “Simple Man”-esque intro and it results in a porch swing on a hot day sort of lazy tune.

“The Bastard Returns” is my second favorite track, the music sets the scene and it’s got this crazy cool riff (they all do though). A story of death on the Plains.

“Life Today is Horse Droppings” (possibly the best song title in recent history) captures that feeling that Deep Gashes and Long Lashes had, and it propels the album into the dark corners of the earth, where the corpses of dead cowboys have become part of the carbon footprint of the old West.

“These Bastards are Evil Men” and the badass “An Axe to Grind” are the perfect closers for this journey into the days of high Western adventure. I love the way other countries look at our old West. Spaghetti Western cinema is still hugely popular even today and its contribution to pop culture just cements how fucking cool it is.

This is, without a doubt, the band’s most experimental album, the riffs that would normally be crunchy, are Country-fried here in this uncharted territory of their own creation. A must-have, listen and absorb the badassery!

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