"The Riff" is a song by the Finnish hard rock band Lordi. It is the first and only single from the album To Beast or Not to Beast, released on February 8, 2013. The band has also made a music video for the song. It's also the very first Lordi song that has been released also as an official lyrics video.

Lordi performed "The Riff" in a German television competition Wok WM in 2013. The song is also featured in a Pinball Rocks app game.

The music video of "The Riff" was filmed exclusively in Czech Republic, in a local supermarket Albert. The video was filmed by Martin Muller. A Czech playmate Dominika Jandlova is featured in the video. The music video got censored by the label Sony Music; they didn't let Dominika Jandlova appear naked in the video.

The lyrics speak figuratively about a near-death experience narrated in the first person. The narrator meets and is offered transport by the grim reaper, which he tries to refuse. The grim reaper insists he "take a peek", referencing visions of the afterlife frequently encountered in near-death experiences. The grim reaper plays a song on guitar and asks the narrator for his honest opinion, to which he uncomfortably replies that "the riff is a killer, but the rest is a throw-away". The grim reaper subsequently dies, and the narrator plagiarises his song, signifying resuscitation and drawing inspiration from the experience.

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Wikipedia