Second album out from these Thunder Bay horror-obsessed thrash/grinders, VHS pooling their love for old-school horror flicks (hence the band name) and gurgly, grindy death metal into one fun 30-minute album here. And the fun element of this band can’t be overstated, first song proper “Gore Flicks” a 21-second blast of Macabre nursery rhyme grind by way of Ghoul’s campy extremity, the listener having no choice, really, but to smile as they’re air-blasting along, a vibe that continues through the early-Carcass sounds of “Growing Pains” and into “Sand, Sun and Bloodshed”, the opening trio of songs definitely setting the tone for what’s to follow, although it doesn’t prepare the listener for the killer opening guitar solo of the relatively epic (4:28) “From The Scrapyard To The Graveyard” or the deep-Floridian sludge of “Freudstein”. 

Mortician references come easy, given this band’s conceptual basis and interest in horror movie samples, but those samples don’t come as fast and furious as with that legendary DM crew, VHS taking time to craft songs that fall somewhere between old-school death metal, gore-grind, and even very heavy thrash at times, with a perfectly raw production sound holding it all together. Some guest appearances from genre heavyweights add to the heft here, with Stevo (Impetigo) and Dave Ingram (Down Among the Dead Men, ex-Benediction, ex-Bolt Thrower), among others, stopping in to say hello, the whole thing just one big gore-metal party, which is the best kind of party. And that’s some pretty amazing ‘80’s-themed cover art, to boot (Madballs!).