Technically proficient guitar solos. Thoughtful, inspired lyrics. Intricate keyboard solos and quite stunning ballads. Just some of the many things that were never associated with Venom, who became the initial black sheep of the NWOBHM: heavier, louder and faster than any of the bands of the era, pushing the envelope so far they not only tore it open, but probably wiped their arses with it too, Venom were the epitome of all I hated about extreme metal. To my mind, they sounded like they couldn't play, their singer roared incomprehensibly, and their songs were a joke.
And they worshipped the Devil. Really. Well, sort of.
Formed in Newcastle in 1978, just as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was rising up like some great tsunami of music and hope and noise and excitement, Venom went through their lineup changes as have most bands at the start. In fact, at the beginning, they weren't even called Venom, but Guillotine, with members from two other bands joining as others left, and in 1979 they took the name Venom, with a lineup finally stablised as a three-piece, as below:
Conrad “Cronos” Lant - Vocals and bass
Jeffrey “Mantas” Dunn - Guitar
Anthony “Abaddon” Bray - Drums
This was the “classic” lineup which recorded Venom's debut album, the very appropriately-named - in every sense - “Welcome to Hell”. Venom would become famous (or infamous) for taking the “black road”, revelling in all things Satanic - at least in public - and writing about the Devil, Hell, damnation and sin. The Religious Right must have loved them! Not exactly musically proficient, they would become ostracised and reviled by the “real” metal bands, who considered them at best a parody and at worst an embarrassment to their music. Nevertheless, Venom would soon gain a large following, which would swell to a huge one, and would give birth to a musical sub-genre of metal.
Welcome to Hell - Venom - 1981 (Neat)
The opener, “Sons of Satan”, puts me in mind right away of fellow thrashers Motorhead: it's superfast, loud, powerful and the vocals are snarled, though in fairness I've been dreading listening to this band's music, and it's not as terrible as I feared it would be. Competent guitar solos from Dunn, drumming that sounds like Bray has about twenty sledgehammers for arms, and it's hard to really review any of the songs, as they all go sort of past in a neverending cacophony of unremitting noise. Don't think we'll be getting any ballads out of this one!
The title track is a little slower - just a little, quite Iron Maiden in its execution - the vocals a little more discernible, and you can see the effect this sort of band would have on the likes of Metallica, Anvil and Megadeth some years later. The track features a female vocal reciting part of The Lord's Prayer, no doubt a deliberate attempt to flip the bird to the Church. Things speed up again for “Schizo”, then there's a rare introspective guitar interlude of just under a minute, where Dunn shows that he
can play guitar, before he's off and shredding again on “Poison”.
I have to be fair here: the vocals, though growly and rough, are still a hell of a lot better than the deep-throated and often unintelligible death grunts/vocals espoused by later bands like Dimmu Borgir and In Flames, and for what they are, and what I expected, I'm surprised and impressed: I assumed this would be one long bout of discordant noise, and it's really not. It's loud, it's rough, it's heavy and it certainly has no frills, but it's still music. Not my kind of music, but I'd still now listen to a Venom album before one by, say, Death. Great solo on “Poison”, before we're into “Live Like an Angel”, which was in fact on their first demo, one of their earliest songs, and which features as the B-side of their first single. It's not bad, to be fair. It's fast, thrashy with yet another great guitar solo and powerful vocals.
The rest of the album is pretty much the same: fast, loud, powerful. It's kind of hard to pick out anything that really stands apart from the general mishmash, though “Witching Hour” has a fantastic guitar solo, and “In League With Satan” is a slow, heavy cruncher in the best mould of Black Sabbath, while “Red Light Fever” opens with, of all things, a violin! But it soon smashes into another hard fast rocker.
There's kind of little to say about Venom's debut. It's loud, it's angry, it's fast and it's unapologetic heavy metal, not to be mistaken for any other sort of music. That's how they were, that's
who they were, and man, were they proud of it!
TRACK LISTING
1. Sons of Satan
2. Welcome to Hell
3. Schizo
4. Mayhem With Mercy
5. Poison
6. Live Like an Angel
7. Witching Hour
8. One Thousand Days in Sodom
9. Angel Dust
10. In League With Satan
11. Red Light Fever
Neither this, nor their followup album sold well, but nevertheless fans turned up at Venom gigs in their droves, discovering a new, harder and faster type of metal. Already becoming disillusioned with the shift of some of the newer bands in the NWOBHM towards more classic heavy rock - and even, in some cases, verging on AOR - diehard metalheads took Venom's loud, brash, almost earsplitting music to their hearts, and embraced the sound that would forever after become known as “black metal”, although it was truer to what would follow as thrash, speed or death metal. Either way, it was the loudest and fastest game in town, and there was a whole new breed of fans who wanted it, and wanted more.
So when Venom released their second album in 1982, one year after their explosive debut hit the shops, it may not have shifted the units, but it pleased the burgeoning fanbase, and more importantly, laid down a marker for hundreds, perhaps thousands of bands to follow. It influenced a new generation of metal bands, and birthed the sub-genres named above. Venom's music would have most influence in Scandinavia, particularly Norway, which would become the focus and spiritual centre of the black, doom, death metal of the nineties, with bands like Darkthrone, Satyricon, Enslaved and Dimmu Borgir all coming up on the music of this Newcastle trio.
Black Metal - Venom - 1982 (Neat)
If
Welcome to Hell was fast, it's nothing compared to
Black Metal: just breakneck all the way. Opener and title track is a juggernaut, setting the tone for the album, while “To Hell and Back” is a bit more coherent, though still damn fast! It's only when “Buried Alive” kicks in that you hear the real Sabbath influence in a total cruncher that would typify the forthcoming black metal sub-genre. Doomy, moody bass, vocals growled as if Lant (now officially credited as Cronos, with his cohorts named as Mantas and Abaddon) is in pain, dirty, moody guitar and stomping drums. Strangely enough, for a four minute song, it doesn't seem like it, and it quickly slips into “Raise the Dead”, as Venom power out with more fast thrash metal, then whatever way Cronos sings, “Teacher's Pet” comes across to me as “Jesus wept”, which he probably did.
Venom do a tongue-in-cheek play on the old song “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” with their “Sacrifice”, blistering guitar carrying the song along on black wings, while to be honest, the next few tracks pass in a blur of shredding and growling: not that they're bad, just kind of unremarkable, and they all more or less blend together, a problem I'm seeing as having dogged at least early Venom. This finally comes to an end with the closer, which is actually a preview of a monster track that would characterise - and title - their third album, which I'm reliably informed saw Venom move into more progressive metal territory. We shall see, but the taster here is certainly interesting and whets the appetite for more.
If they did evolve into a more prog-metal band, even for one album, it could only be a good thing for Venom because, although they were ultra-popular with the hardcore metal fans, no band can be expected to keep up that level of energy and power in their albums, and even if they did, at some point it's all going to get stale and repetitive. I already find it hard to remember much about either of these albums. Everything seems very much the same all the way through.
TRACK LISTING
1. Black Metal
2. To Hell and Back
3. Buried Alive
4. Raise the Dead
5. Teacher's Pet
6. Leave Me in Hell
7. Sacrifice
8. Heaven's On Fire
9. Countess Bathory
10. Don't Burn the Witch
11. At War with Satan (preview)
Normally I wouldn't go for three albums in a row, from a band who have more than that (twelve at the moment, with another due this year), but due to the marked shift in musical direction brought about by their third album, I feel it's important to examine it. It's supposed to have, as I already mentioned, progressive leanings, and considering what I've heard so far, I'm curious as to how Venom accomplished that.
At War with Satan - Venom - 1983 (Neat)
Eager to prove themselves as proper musicians, and be taken seriously by their contemporaries, Venom produced an album which had one side devoted to one huge composition, the title track, consciously emulating Rush with their
2112 opus. They would only have one more album released before leaving Neat Records, and it would in fact be another three years after that album before they would again return to the studio.
The title track, which opens the album, is less thrashy, as it were, than previous efforts, and shows the band indeed expanding their repertoire to include elements usually found within the more progressive of the heavy metal bands, like Iron Maiden, and later Kamelot, Dream Theater, Opeth and Shadow Gallery. It's still loud, and mostly fast, but “At War With Satan” goes through, over the course of its almost twenty minutes, some interesting changes. The choral vocals at about the thirteen-minute mark, and the gentle acoustic guitar for instance, very atypical of what people had come to expect from this band. The dark narration, with choral vocals and what sounds like (but isn't) deep keyboard in the background near the end, which is, I believe, the excerpt included on the previous album. All very new and a total change of direction for the godfathers of black metal. Rather oddly, it suddenly fades out, very unsatisfying after basically twenty minutes of waiting for a powerful end, for it to just drift away like that...
It's perhaps telling that a band who began their career more or less swearing their allegiance to Lucifer had, by 1983, declared themselves His enemy, fighting against him, though of course that was probably just for the song. Nevertheless, there are after this no mentions of Satanic themes, Hell (except in the closer-but-one, and then only peripherally) or black magic, and it seems Venom are beginning to shed the image of “black music idiots” they had been carrying since their debut album. Wanting to be taken seriously, it seems they widened their lyrical and thematic base to include subjects perhaps closer to the average metaller's heart, like beer, women and motorcycles.
The rest of the album returns to the basic style, and even in fairness “At War With Satan” is just a longer version of their usual fare, though it does attempt to break out of the rather restricted mould. You're not about to get any intricate keyboard solos or plucked classical guitar on this album, though! “Cry Wolf” is a good rocker, as is “Stand up (and be counted)”, with its hilarious and yet ardent declaration
”We are the/ Black Metal Gods!/ V-E-N-O-****ing-M!” You've gotta laugh!
But sadly, laughter is the only real reaction to this album, and to the whole band, so far, from me. Especially the last track, simply entitled “Aaaaarrgh!”, and which basically seems to be a mad jam with lots of drumming, screaming and - somewhere in there - sound like, a piano! Weird is not the word!
I can see why Venom weren't taken seriously and were ridiculed by the other metal bands of the NWOBHM. I mean, compare them to any of those I've previously featured, or to the godly Iron Maiden or Saxon: there's just no contest. Venom are - or were, we'll see if they changed shortly - playing at metal, while the others were doing it seriously for a living. Still, they certainly made money out of it, and gained the respect, reverence and awe of a whole new upcoming slew of bands from the USA to coldest Norway.
TRACK LISTING
1. At War with Satan
2. Rip Ride
3. Genocide
4. Cry Wolf
5. Stand Up (And Be Counted)
6. Women, Leather and Hell
7. Aaaaarrgh!
The ride, of course, couldn't last, and after 1984's
Possessed failed to impress, Dunn left the band, and after 1987's
Calm Before the Storm, the rest of the band departed, leaving only Bray to continue on. Rather like Cloven Hoof, reviewed prior, Bray then set about putting a “new” Venom together, and they released three more records. Finally, in 1995, eleven years after the first of the original band had left and eight since the others legged it to leave Bray sailing the ship alone, Venom got back together and released an album in 1997, whose themes returned to the dark ones of the first two albums but also mixed in the mythological ideas that had powered the unsuccessful
Calm Before the Storm. This, then, is the final example of Venom's work we're going to look at.
Cast in Stone - Venom - 1997 (SPV/Steamhammer)
So, the guys are back together. Is there any improvement in the sound? Well, yes and no. Cronos seems to have managed to learn how to sing a little more clearly, though only a little. Mantas is as always pretty nifty on the guitar, and Abaddon is, well, Abaddon. This could be the shortest review ever.
“The Evil One” gets Venom right back to basics, with a return to the Satanic imagery they relied on for their first two albums, if a little slower than usual, but losing none of the heaviness. The reduction in speed is soon erased though when “Raised in Hell” shoots at you like a missile, almost the speed of thought. Well, at least the boys sound like they're having fun! Which, I have to say, is more than I am...
“All Devil's Eve” and “Bleeding” are the usual Venom fare, while the longest track, almost seven minutes of mayhem in “Destroyed and Damned” opens with an unusally melodic guitar from Mantas, recalling a little of the progressive leanings of “At war with Satan”, and bringing to mind the best of Iron Maiden: even Cronos sings a little more softly. Could this be a Venom ballad? Such a thing even possible? Nice peals of thunder against the background of the restrained guitar, then the power chords explode, and the song is, well, not a ballad. More a metal cruncher, something close to Metallica's “Enter Sandman” really. Well, I'll give them this much: it's about the best-constructed and played song I've heard from Venom so far. Mind you, that's not saying a lot for the rest of their material.
Let's be honest,
Cast in Stone does showcase Cronos' newfound ability to sing: I mean, I can actually understand most of what he's shouting about this time round! “Flight of the Hydra” brings in the influence of myth and legend on the lyrics explored by Venom in
Calm Before the Storm, one of their least successful albums: their fans wanted songs about devils and blood, not fairies and giants! But it's a nice change of pace, in a way, although the music is never less than crushingly loud and breakneck fast. “God's Forsaken” though takes us back to Satanic territory lyrically, with the music a little less frenetic and a really nice, technically flawless guitar solo from Mantas. There's another one in “Infectious”, and the guy really seems to be learning his craft well.
Nice bass intro to “Kings of Evil”, but other than that it's a fairly standard Venom song, as is the cheerful “You're All Gonna Die”, then it's nearly over as we head into “Judgement Day”, a slower, heavy cruncher about - anyone? - with a very competent and dramatic guitar solo, and the album closes with “Swarm”, a fast rocker which is actually a little bit melodic. Slipping there, boys?
Well, as far as I can see, the Venom lads should have stayed together, as the “classic” lineup seems to be a lot better than the “alternative” Venom that Bray put together in their absence. In the end though, it's kind of a moot point, as to me it's basically all noise. No, that's not fair: it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and there are some genuinely good moments throughout their catalogue, insofar as I've managed to listen to it, but in general this is not a band whose music I would listen to, given a choice.
TRACK LISTING
1. The Evil One
2. Raised in Hell
3. All Devil's Eve
4. Bleeding
5. Destroyed and Damned
6. Domus Mundi
7. Flight of the Hydra
8. God's Forsaken
9. Mortals
10. Infectious
11. Kings of Evil
12. You're All Gonna Die
13. Judgement Day
14. Swarm
Of course, this isn't an article about who I personally do or don't like in the pantheon of NWOBHM bands. The fact remains that Venom opened up the world of heavy metal to a whole new generation, created a new sound, invented or coined a new sub-genre of metal and have forever taken their place in the lore of the NWOBHM, a place which can never be assailed or questioned, no matter your opinion of them as a band, as people or of their music.
In the end, the best - and probably most fitting - tribute that can be paid to Venom is that they were, are, and always will be, Venom. You know: V-E-N-O-****ing-M!
So that concludes the second part of our look at the bands who were pivotal in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. It will be a while before the next part, as I have a lot of other articles to attend to, but next time I'll be looking at Wolf, Tank and the mighty Saxon. Till then, keep rockin'! (And no sneaky worshipping the Devil, all right?)