{"id":671402,"date":"2026-11-01T03:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T03:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671402\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T03:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T03:12:14","slug":"venom-the-story-behind-the-black-metal-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671402\/","title":{"rendered":"Venom: the story behind the Black Metal album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venom<\/a>\u2019s 1982 album Black Metal is one of the most influential records in history, detonating a chain reaction that would result in thrash<\/a>, death metal<\/a> and, of course, black metal<\/a> itself \u2013 even if it was roundly mocked at the time. In 2011, Venom singer and bass-bludgeoner Cronos looked back on the making of a twisted masterpiece.<\/p>\n

It may feel like the genesis of heavy metal<\/a> should have been sparked when a lightning bolt hit a mountain, but in reality, the birth of the song Black Sabbath<\/a> would not have made for a great fly-on-the-wall documentary. As momentous as this event was, something that happened over a period of several weeks punctuated by many arguments over who was making the next round of brews and interminable conversations over exactly which take of the line \u2018Oh, no, no! Please God help me!\u2019 was the most convincingly terrifying and how loud the bell should be in the final mix, would not have made for great cinema.<\/p>\n

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This is one of the reasons why full credit should be given to Conrad \u2018Cronos\u2019 Lant<\/a>, the mainstay of extreme metal pioneers Venom for refusing to mystify the making of their iconic second album, Black Metal, in 1982, no matter how influential and important it went on to become. He\u2019s quite candid about what is arguably the most important album in the birth of extreme metal ever recorded.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe had no idea what we were doing was going to become such a big thing. So many bands were in the studio at the same time as us. How the hell could I have presumed that it would be my band who would be the lasting name? We weren\u2019t trying to be the next Iron Maiden<\/a> or the next this or that. We just wanted to do what we enjoyed. You had a band like [fellow Geordie NWOBHM outfit] Tygers Of Pan Tang always dropping Purple references; you know, \u2018We want to be the next Deep Purple.\u2019 Well, Venom never did that. We never said that. We said, \u2018We are now, we are new, we are Venom.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Venom\u2019s classic line-up: (from left) Cronos, Abaddon, Mantas (Image credit: Fin Costello\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

Venom formed in Newcastle in 1979 and coalesced into their early classic lineup of Cronos on bass and vocals, Tony \u2018Abaddon\u2019 Bray on drums and Jeff \u2018Mantas\u2019 Dunn on guitar the following year. There were several key environmental factors at work during this unholy conception. Newcastle in the late 1970s was a hard bitten, industrial city, destabilised and depressed by high unemployment and a profound lack of meaningful choice available to the majority, working-class inhabitants who lived there. It was a city where you \u201cput on your father\u2019s clothes when you were old enough and then went and did his job\u201d.<\/p>\n

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This feature was originally published in Metal Hammer magazine issue 225, November 2011 (Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n

Except, according to Cronos, \u201cThat wasn\u2019t an option in 1979 \u2013 there were no jobs left.\u201d Everything from the dark Satanic Mills of the English industrial revolution to the once-mighty ship yards had been forced to shut up shop, leaving most of the erstwhile sons of toil signing on and pissed off. The city was, in many respects, similar to Birmingham, the home of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest<\/a> and half of Led Zeppelin, all favourite groups of the bassist. Except a decade later, many young Geordies had fallen under another spell as well as metal:<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up in the 70s in the north of England, punk meant everything to me. The whole industry was dying, the ship- yards, everything. There was no future. There was no hope. Punk music was a way for the real people in this country to get a voice. It was the great unwashed getting a say for once, shouting, \u2018Fucking hell, we\u2019re not happy about this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Seeing his desire to be in a metal band as a mission, he was drawn to work with Abaddon and Mantas simply because they struck him as the only people he had met who were as driven as him. Their chops were the last thing on his mind. And in return, the other two were keen to work with Cronos because he had access to a studio. Ironically, the only place they had played with any great regularity before they recorded their debut album, Welcome To Hell, was a church.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur practise room was a church, our first ever gig was in a church and our first demo was recorded in a church \u2013 I\u2019ve still got the tapes; we sounded fucking terrible,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cThere was this Methodist vicar who liked the idea of putting a few bob in his pocket, so we would set up on the altar just in front of the pulpit and away we went. The Vicar used to let us in and then fuck off. So we ransacked the place basically… ha ha ha! I\u2019ve still got some of the big old candles and crucifixes that we nicked off him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venom – Black Metal (Official Video) – YouTube
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Another influence on Black Metal was a feeling that they\u2019d been misled by their record label, Neat, during the recording of their debut; an experience they were keen not to repeat. The frontman had worked overtime at the studios where he worked for months until he could afford to pay for a heavily discounted three-day period when it wasn\u2019t in use. After blagging help and tape they were ready to roll. There was just one problem.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe recorded Welcome To Hell in three days and they were just demos,\u201d says Cronos. \u201cWe thought that if the label liked them we\u2019d be given a green light and we\u2019d have the chance to record them properly as a great new album over a week or so. But then when the record company heard the tapes they said, \u2018No, we like it the way it is, we\u2019ll put it out like that.\u2019 We must have looked horrified… there were timing issues, there were tuning issues but they just said, \u2018No, it goes out like that or not at all.\u2019 They had our arms forced up behind our backs because there was no way in hell we were going to turn down an album. No fucking way at all. There was that kind of feeling, \u2018Fucking hell. We\u2019re going to blow this before we\u2019ve even started.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The following year Venom still had everything to prove and the little that they had achieved to lose. The fact that their biggest supporter in the press, the legendary Geoff Barton, described Welcome To Hell as having \u201cthe hi-fi dynamics of a 50-year-old pizza\u201d, really showed that they had their work cut out for them… and this is where Cronos\u2019s tenacity revealed itself fully for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew we had to record this one properly,\u201d he says. \u201cWe knew what kind of tricks might be played on us, so we made sure all those songs were nailed before we went into the studio. And for me, Black Metal is our first proper album, because Welcome To Hell is just demos.\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughs as he describes the sheer luxury that was offered them during the week-long extravaganza. \u201cWe got the chance to overdub some solos. We got the chance to redo some vocals. Welcome To Hell took three days to record and mix and Black Metal took seven days. But we had our shit down so tight we knew all we had to do was to get a sound on the kit and a sound on the back line and BANG!, just nail the fucker.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Venom\n<\/p>\n

Cronos and scaly friend (Image credit: Fin Costello\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

Black Metal opens with a literal assault on the listener. There isn\u2019t even a run-in groove on the original vinyl album \u2013 the first sound you hear is a horrible noise the second the needle hits the groove (if you\u2019re listening to the original vinyl it does this anyhow). It seemed that punk nihilism, the heavy industry of the area, a real desire to shock the listener out of complacency and a vicious sense of mischief were coming together in a screeching sonic scree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is literally a chainsaw cutting into metal,\u201d says Cronos. \u201cAbaddon used to work in a steel factory. I was saying to him, \u2018We really need to find this annoying sound to go at the start of the album.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Fucking hell, if you\u2019ve ever heard metal grinding on metal, it\u2019s a sound that will go right through you.\u2019 We took huge chunks of steel into the studio, put them into a vice and away we went. It was a fucking incredible sound, menacing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was simply one of many strategies that he was using to make the record lively, unexpected and unique. Cronos took a more literal approach to spooking out the listener on the track Buried Alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came to the studio with all these buckets of mud, sand and flour and we put some microphones inside some cardboard boxes in a stairwell. Then we got all these spades and slowly started filling in the boxes with the mud and soil. There were a load of guys into the studio when we did the whole, \u2018We came into this world with nothing and with nothing we shall depart\u2019 bit. They were doing the crying and whimpering as if they were at a real funeral, and the funny thing was we had to do this a lot of times because no one was whimpering or crying, people were actually trying to hold back laughter. And when we came back to listen to the tape the weird thing was that the actual laughter actually sounded like crying, and that\u2019s what you can hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black metal as a genre would go on to mean many different things to many different people over the next three decades, but to Cronos it means exactly the same thing today as it did then.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was our way of distinguishing our music from the run-of-the-mill heavy metal that was coming out back then. When people were telling me that rock was dead at the end of the 1970s, I couldn\u2019t help but wish that most of it was because it was that fucking lame. \u2018Black metal\u2019 was coined because I wanted to describe how different we were to other bands of the time, even how different we were to most \u2018heavy metal\u2019 bands of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venom (London 1985) [04]. Countess Bathory – YouTube
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The influence of Black Metal is so vast it can barely be measured. As well as providing the name and many of the conventions for one of the healthiest sub- genres of metal still thriving today, it also set the foundations for much of what we now call extreme metal, in particular thrash<\/a>, death, speed metal.<\/p>\n

If many in the UK sneered at a perceived lack of technical prowess in Venom, this was easily offset by their growing legion of fans in the US. And it really didn\u2019t hurt that some of them were in bands such as Metallica, Slayer and Exodus.<\/p>\n

But of course, if we had to boil down the significance of this album to one time and place it would probably be to Oslo in the late 1980s\/early 1990s. Everything about Venom was sacrosanct to the second wave of BM, or the practitioners of True Norwegian Black Metal, from the lo-fi aesthetic, the Satanic imagery, the desire to alienate the listener and even the style of dress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sent early demo tapes by acts like Burzum and Mayhem<\/a>,\u201d says Cronos. \u201cThey reminded me of early Venom in that it was guys who cared more about the passion of the music than the accuracy of it. It reminded me of our first two albums and how I was 10 years earlier, that enthusiasm and hunger. Of all the bands who came up after Venom \u2013 not Metallica and not Exodus \u2013 they were the only ones who had that \u2018looseness\u2019, that punk rawness, the piss, the shit, the snot, the vomit that we had. I could hear it in those young Norwegian bands who were going Hell for leather. Those guys still cite Venom as a big influence but they need to take more credit for what they did. They evolved the sound. I just think it was a shame that it was overshadowed by that church-burning bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Venom\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: dpa picture alliance \/ Alamy Stock Photo)<\/p>\n

He\u2019s keen to point out that the influence can often be felt in unexpected places: \u201cI think the lasting impact of Black Metal for me is that it has earned us respect in areas that you wouldn\u2019t expect. When you hear someone like Dave Grohl say how important it was to him when he was in school then that\u2019s a big deal. Also it\u2019s further-reaching than you think. It\u2019s like when you meet a lawyer in a suit and he\u2019s asking you for a Black Metal shirt. The secret Venom fans. Those are the kinds of things that last because you realise how important it was for a lot of other people as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

But ultimately, the strength of Black Metal is its raw, ugly sound – the noise you make when you genuinely don\u2019t give a fuck and have nothing to lose.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely. I think it\u2019s about the intensity and conviction that you put into the recording. If you play with fire and vengeance you can get away with dodgy production because people pick up on the actual vibe of the performance in the studio and that\u2019s how I think the first Venom records did OK. Because people weren\u2019t going, \u2018Oh I think there\u2019s something wrong with the production,\u2019 they were saying, \u2018Fuck me!\u2019 They got where we were coming from. They got the fact that we were young and full of \u2018ARRRGHHHH!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Metal Hammer magazine issue 225, November 2011<\/p>\n

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