Venom

Storm The Gates spiNeFarm

Still crazy after all these years.

In the late-90s, when Conrad Lant, aka Cronos, returned to his rightful place as frontman of Satan-invoking headbangers Venom, he was bluntly dismissive of bands that had worshipped his own. Earlier that decade, Norwegian black metal – inspired by and named after Venom’s seminal 1982 album – had developed in a cult-like scene, with band members committing arson attacks on churches, the violence culminating in the grisly murder of Mayhem’s leader, Oystein Aarseth, by rival Varg Vikernes of the band Burzum. “If you make music you’re a musician,” Lant said. “But if you kill someone you’re just a murderer.”

Norwegian black metal was an unwanted legacy for Venom, entirely at odds with the pride Lant felt in his band’s influence on Metallica, Slayer and subsequent exponents of extreme music. He also described the Norwegian bands as fraudulent. “There’s only one black metal band,” he said, “and that’s Venom.” What he had not anticipated was the farcical situation he now finds himself in – as leader of one of two versions of Venom.

A rival band named Venom Inc. features the two other members of the classic Venom line-up that made Black Metal – guitarist Jeff Dunn (alias Mantas) and drummer Tony Bray (Abaddon)

– plus bassist/vocalist Tony ‘The Demolition Man’ Dolan, who replaced Lant in Venom in the late 80s. The first Venom Inc. album, Avé, released in 2017, contained echoes of the past in the punkmetal noise mixed with industrial rock textures. But in Venom’s glory days Lant was always the dominant figure – his voice a mighty roar, and his monstrous bass sound once memorably described as “the pumping black heart of Venom”. And it’s his OTT persona – a Geordie Gene Simmons – that makes his Venom the genuine article.

Storm The Gates is the third album Lant has made with guitarist Stuart ‘Rage’ Dixon and drummer Danny ‘Dante’ Needham. And while this trio play with more cohesion than the famously ragged original line-up, the dark power of old still resonates. The album’s opening track, Bring Out Your Dead, is a bludgeoning attack. A slew of fast songs hark back to Venom’s savage 1981 debut Welcome To Hell. And in the two most atmospheric numbers – the slow, grinding Destroyer and the Slayer-esque I Dark Lord – Lant plays the bogeyman to chilling effect.

Venom’s legend was built on the unholy trinity of Welcome To Hell, Black Metal and At War With Satan. In Conrad Lant, now aged 56, the fire still burns.