Venom: Black Metal (Leper!) Messiahs By Steve Earles
“When I first heard Venom, it was
on the Friday Rock Show on Radio 1, hosted by the
legendary Thomas ‘the’ Vance. I think it was In League
With Satan. It sounded to me like some kind of wild
electricity to my young ears. I used to record all the
Friday Rock Shows on my mono Panasonic tape recorder.
But this time I pressed rewind and just kept playing the
song over and over. I was ‘poisoned’ (sorry!) and have
been ever since. Without Venom there would be no Hellhammer/Bathory/Slayer/Bulldozer/Destruction etc
etc etc and therefore no ‘second wave’ BM. Venom rule
and without them life would have been very boring.” Steve Watson - Ravens Creed
“Having been kicked in the balls by Motorhead, slapped
in the face by Tank, and bruised about the torso by
Discharge, I had reached the summit of extremity. Or so
I had thought…”
“Then at the time of the NWOBHM collapse appeared an
album that defied all my perceptions of extremity. For
sure, this obscure band from Newcastle had already a
rough as you like it debut in the form of the rugged
Welcome To Hell. This was at the time an overlooked slab
of vinyl and even myself pondered its accelerated NWOBHM
implosion of musical chaos. And then came the most
ear-lacerating, liver-poisoning album I had ever heard.
It was like a howitzer had lodged itself up my arse and
fired its round into my chest cavity, decimating my guts
and hauling me into the shit-smeared bowels of Hell.
Venom’s Black Metal was the changing of the times and
the album that changed heavy metal forever. Sure,
Metallica, Slayer, Exodus and the rest all followed and
all kicked serious ass, but I had already been
acclimatised by Venom so the avalanche of noise was not
hard to absorb. Not so with Black Metal. This was the
first of its kind and one should think very carefully
before estimating its effect on metal music in general.
Celtic Frost may be lauded as innovators, Bathory may be
cited as scene setter. But Venom were the first and no
one can take that away from them.” Crin - Godreah Records
Venom! For those of us who know, the very sound of that
name conjurers up the primal fury of raw punk, metal,
and rock n’ roll mutating into something new.
For, even though when Welcome To Hell was released in
1981, no one realised it (least of all Venom!), this
unholy mutation of punk, Priest, Sabbath and Motorhead
would give birth to several new musical genres.
1981 might have been the peak of the New Wave Of British
Heavy metal but Venom bore little resemblance to bands
such as Def Leppard and Saxon.
Venom began at the end of the 70s, but they didn’t sound
the way posterity will remember them until bassist
Conrad Lant, better known as Cronos, took over from
previous vocalist Clive Archer (who rejoiced in the
stage name of Jesus Christ!), together with Tony Bray,
better know as Abaddon, on drum, and Jeff Dunn, AKA
Mantas, on guitar, the diabolic trio would form the
classic Venom line-up.
In 1980, Venom recorded a six-track demo at the cost of
£50 in four hours (compare than with Metallica’s Saint
Anger! There is no comparison. Venom would have been
ashamed to put their name to such musical excreta).
In January 1981 Venom signed to North Eastern Label Neat
Records (also home at various times to such fine bands
as Warfare, Raven, Artillery, White Spirit and The
Tygers of Pan Tang [a name inspired by the works of
Michael Moorcock]). No doubt Satan herself was present
for this epoch-making moment and doubtlessly a small sea
of Newcastle Brown Ale was quaffed…which is as it should
be. They wasted little time in cutting a single In
League With Satan/Live Like An Angel, and at the same
session they recorded a version of Angel Dust for Neat’s
mighty Lead Weight compilation.
Venom spent the next few months flitting back and forth
between Hell and Earth, then in August of 1981, Venom
returned to the studio to record more demo[n]s at the
request of Neat’s David Wood. Wood was so impressed by
the results that he decreed these would be first Venom
album: Welcome To Hell
This was a nuclear explosion on the metal scene, one
who’s shock waves are still being felt to this day.
Make no mistake (and all you deniers and history
revisions can FOAD, go back to whatever trend you’ve
been told to like this week), herein lies the seeds of
thrash metal, speed metal, death metal, and black metal.
To my mind, after Black Sabbath and Motorhead, Venom are
the third most influential metal band of all time.
The sleeve to Welcome To Hell is now iconic with it’s
baphomet/pentagram design (when I wear one t-shirt with
this design out, I instantly replace it).
Geoff Barton at Kerrang deserves kudos for championing
Venom, he was a man ahead of his time, certainly the
majority of his cohorts were busy championing the direst
weakest dreck possible, these are the same people who in
the future would put the likes of Phil Collins and Bon
Jovi on the cover. The deviants! Foul doesn’t even begin
to cover it. (Undeserving individuals and bands being
praised, not much has changed…)
Venom’s sense of humour was often missed, particularly
by those with no sense of humour themselves. For
instance the Welcome To Hell sleeve bears the following
legend. IF THIS LP IS SCRATCHED. WARPED OR DEFACED IN
ANY WAY, PLEASE THROW IT AWAY AND BUY A NEW ONE!
Every track on this release is a stone cold classic but
personal highlights include the title track, Poison,
Live Like An Angel, Witching Hour, Angel Dust, and In
League With Satan.
In 1982, Venom unleashed Black
Metal, again produced by Keith Nicol at Impulse. The album opens with the sound
of Abaddon cutting into a studio door with a chainsaw.
The title track shows a marked improvement in Venom’s
song writing. “Black up the night, metal we fight/Power
amps set to explode/ Energy screams, magic and
dreams/Satan records the first note.”
Sacrifice, To Hell and Back, Raise the Dead, Leave Me In
Hell, Heaven’s On Fire, Don‘t Burn The Witch, and a
preview of At War With Satan are all stone cold metal
classics now, and if you use your imagination, you can
see how fresh and new they sounded then. Buried Alive
invokes a creepy claustrophobic atmosphere. While
Teacher’s Pet is very un-PC indeed.
The stand-out track to me, one that should be in any top
100 classic metal tracks is Countess Bathory. “Living in
her self styled Hell, the Countess dressed in
black/Life’s so distant-death’s so neat-no blood to turn
time back/The castle’s walls are closing in, she’s
crippled now with age/Welcomes death with open arms-the
reaper turns the page.”
Once again, Venom’s sense of humour was very much in
evidence. Cronos billed himself as Dynosaur Destroyer
Bass and Vocal, Mantas played Chainsaw Guitar, Abaddon
was, for reasons best known to himself, the 125
Inter-City Express.
With typical ‘humility’ the album bears the legend
CONTINUED THANKS TO VENOM. FOR WITHOUT THEIR HELP THIS
ALBUM WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE.
Which is totally logical if you think about it.
Best of all was HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC. SO IS
VENOM.
Around this time Venom released a 12” single, the
classic Die Hard, which would become a firm favourite
with the Venom Legions.
As previewed on Black Metal, Venom’s third album At War
With Satan features the full length title track which
took up the entire first side of the album. It’s fine
and ambitious effort, though it wasn’t generally
appreciated at the time (BTW-the mighty Metal Forces
aside, it’s worth remembering that the majority of the
British music press hated thrash metal, loathed it,
didn’t understand it. These pop fans however, very
quickly jumped on the thrash bandwagon when the likes of
Metallica and Slayer dragged it into arenas, like fleas
they jumped off again pretty quick to bend over for the
next trend. Also worth mentioning from this period are
Paul Miller and Don Kaye, both huge champions of
underground metal, while Don is still with us, and is a
fine writer, poor Paul Miller is sadly deceased, a great
shame and still a constant inspiration to me in
championing the underground always. These two were
interested in the music, not boasting about their own
drunken ‘exploits’ like certain notorious and pathetic
self-serving ‘journalists’ from this period).
The remainder of the album is unrelated to the concept
(so it’s half a concept album!), the rest of the album
comprising of typical Venom blaster like Cry Wolf, Rip
Ride and the excellently titled Women, Leather and Hell!
Venom also released a fine single Warhead (the single
Manitou is another classic), which become notorious when
a now-forgotten DJ called Mike Read played it on his
show, accepting pledges for charity not to play it. Ho,
ho, how ‘funny’. Tommy Vance did promote Venom, in fact
Tommy plays some great stuff in this period, but then he
was a music lover, not a self-promoter like the Read
fellow. Warhead incredibly made number 64 on the
national charts. Now, that was in the days when you
actually had to sell records to get a chart placing, so
that’d probably be enough sales for a number one today!
Live Venom would play their legendary Seven Dates of
Hell, and more, and they would be supported by the likes
of Metallica and Slayer.
It’s worth mentioning that not only did Venom give a
huge boost to Metallica and Slayer by taking them on
tour, but they gave them major kudos on their album
sleeves and in interviews.
Metallica or more aptly Greedtallica, have never repaid
Venom’s support, this doesn’t surprise me, they probably
learnt altruism from Kiss. But I expected more from
Slayer.
At the time of At War With Satan, this was the point
that Venom could have become huge and become the
spearhead for a movement they had created the blueprint
for. It didn’t happen, and by 1986, Metallica had
released Master of Puppets, Slayer had released Reign In
Blood, and Megadeth, Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying,
leaving Venom in their wake. (It’s worth noting though,
that Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth peaked themselves
with those albums, and would never release anything that
fresh and worthy again).
Venom next released Possessed, and it was clear the
party was coming to an end, though in retrospect, it’s
not a bad album, the excellently titled Satanarchist and
Powerdrive prove this, but it needed to be a hell of a
lot more. Firstly, Neat were too small a label for
Venom, fact (check out the terrible cover for Possessed
as proof, and compare it to the classic album covers
from this period). Secondly, the band steadfastly
refused to bring in an outside producer, and the punters
were comparing their productions with those of Metallica
and Slayer…no contest. Thirdly, the relationships
between the band members, never great, were steadily
worsening. Fourthly, to take things to the next level,
you need a good manager, and a good worth ethic, if
Venom had toured their arses off instead of making
increasingly hollow boasts in the press, they would have
been bigger than Iron Maiden.
On the band’s American tour, Mantas was struck down with
a dangerous combination of chicken pox and glandular
fever, and was replaced by two guitarists temporarily,
Dave Irwin (Fist) and Les Cheetam (Avenger). Thus, when
Mantas quit Venom during the recording of Venom’s fifth
album, to have been entitled Deadline (there was talk a
few years ago, of releasing the Deadline demos on disc,
certainly there would be great interest), he was
replaced by two guitarists. Following the departure of
Mantas, a live Venom album was released. It was to have
been called Live In ’85, but instead rejoiced in the
more grandiose title, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, stolen off
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. An excellent live album, and a
relief from the glut of poor quality live releases
licensed by Neat (this did no good for Venom, another
example of their not taking enough control of their
career). As well as the expected live favourites,
there’s a live version of The Chanting Of The Priests,
which gives an indication of the direction that Venom
had intended for Deadline. Mantas would record a more
melodic release called Winds of Change. Venom recruited
Mike Hickey and Jim Clare to replace Mantas for their
fifth album, which although it used Deadline material
(including a track of the same name), was released in
1987 under the title Calm Before The Storm. It’s an
excellent album but one that was met with indifference.
Boasting an improved production from Nick Tauber and
more assured playing and song writing, it was a great
leap forward for Venom, but once again, they were ahead
of their time. This album, with its more traditional,
power metal style approach was akin to the leap that
Metallica had made with the Black Album.
But, once again internal divisions rent the band, this
time Cronos left Venom taking with him the two new
guitarists to form the nucleus of his own band modestly
entitled Cronos. Cronos would release two decent albums,
but of most interest is a third called Venom, which not
only includes tracks off the first two Cronos albums,
but re-recorded Venom classics, and tracks of an as-yet
unreleased album called Triumverate. This was a Venom
album in all but name featured Cronos, Mike Hickey and
former Cathedral drummer Mark Wharton (interestingly
Hickey would briefly play with Cathedral and then label
mates Carcass).
Meanwhile, Abaddon had reunited with Mantas and had
recruited Tony Dolan from Atomkraft to replace Cronos.
This new version of Venom signed to MFN. They released
an album called Prime Evil in 1989. A decent enough
album (Martin Walkyier’s Skyclad would go on to do an
amazing cover of the title track), but again the public
were indifferent and the band and label did little to
support the release. Three increasingly weak and
pointless efforts followed, Tear Your Soul Apart (1990),
Temples of Ice (1991) and The Wastelands (1992), until
this line-up finally withered away from utter
indifference.
The classic line-up reunited in 1995, to record an album
called Cast In Stone on SPV. This was a decent enough
album and came with a disc of re-recorded classics.
Abaddon was replaced by Cronos’s brother Anthony
‘Antton’ Lant for the Resurrection album in 2000. In
2002 Mantas departed again (and has as yet not returned,
still, anything is possible in the world of Venom.) He
was replaced by his previous replacement mike Hickey for
two decent enough albums, Metal Black and Hell. Since
then, Anthony Bray has been replaced by Danny Needham
and Mike Hickey by a guitarist named Rage, and further
recordings are imminent.
Fair dues to Cronos for taking the Venom sound into the
21st century, but at the end of the day, what the fans
want will always be the classic line up, and that is the
albatross around Cronos’s neck. In Venom’s thirty year
plus history, there have been many surprises and changes
and we can expect a few more yet.
What made the classic Venom line-up great was their
sheer innocence and originality, there was no master
plan, and while this frequently caused problems, Venom
has done much to inspire and create whole genres of
music. Few bands will ever operate with such naïve
honesty and enthusiasm again, which says a lot for the
sad state of musical affairs of the 21st century. Such
bands as The Meads of Asphodel keep the spirit of Venom
alive by doing things their way, with no thought to
commercial success or acceptance.
