VENOM
Storm The Gates
SPINEFARM
Newcastle’s heavy metal pioneers return in fighting form
Few groups have been as loved and loathed as Venom. For every Scandinavian malcontent who formed a band and burned down a church after listening to Black Metal, there were a dozen detractors queuing up to crucify them as Satanic oiks and/or musical morons. But that’s how legends are built, and Venom have prospered long after the haters retreated back to their parents’ basements.
Actually, ‘prospered’ is stretching it. ‘Endured’ is better. Or maybe just ‘muddled through’. Like Motörhead in the 90s and early 00s, Venom have raised being taken for granted to an artform. Sure, not every one of their latterday albums has hit home, but there have been a fair few battered treasures among them.
Storm The Gates is one of them. The black wind that whipped the sails of
2015’s From The Very Depths is back and as strong as it was before. Opener Bring Out Your Dead kicks in with the kind of gloriously crusty battery that Venom themselves invented all those years ago. ‘Brrrrrrring out your dead,’ bellows bassist/ vocalist/sole original member Conrad ‘Cronos’ Lant, rolling his ‘r’s like the Beelzebubian ham he is as guitarist La Rage and drummer Dante (Stuart and Danny to their mums) raise all kinds of hell behind him.
Forty years in, Cronos sounds more up for the fight than ever – literally, in the case of the pugilistic Dark Night (Of The Soul). ‘Hey you motherfucker, what you looking at?’ he growls, ‘Born a fucking loser, acting like a twat.’ It’s not clear who has provoked his ire, but given his band’s turbulent history, the list of candidates is long. Expecting these Satanic brickies to change their approach after all this time is a mug’s game, and they don’t disappoint. I Dark Lord, Destroyer and the concluding title track rumble and judder like demonically possessed concrete mixers. But the sound is sharp and the hunger is keen. Venom won’t be troubling the organisers of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame any time soon, but Storm The Gates is a grand ‘fuck you’ to the haters.
FOR FANS OF: Motörhead, Cradle Of Filth, Chrome Division
DAVE EVERLEY