Hell On Earth
First I will start with a little tale of how Venom and I first met. There were no ‘our eyes met across a crowded room’ or anything as romantic as that. It was 1982, and I think i was still in my final year of school. It was customary for my fellow rocker friends to pass their musical tastes onto each other. In the main, it was a mostly pleasant experience for me, swapping vinyl (big CDs to you young ‘uns!) of the likes of Thin Lizzy, Scorpions, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Rush etc. At least you can see where I am going.
Anyway on this particular day, I trotted happily home from school, the sun was shining, the birdies were tweeting, it was like Little Red Riding Hood on the way to Grandma’s with my new found band to listen to. Yes, it was Venom. In ’82 they brought out ‘Black Metal’. I ran up the stairs to my bedroom, adorned with posters of people like ‘Sir David of Coverdale’ and placed the vinyl on my little £40 Tandy Hi-Fi. Almost immediately my mum came running up the stairs, ‘What’s happened son? Are you Ok?’, ‘Make it stop Mum! My little melodic ears can’t take the pain!’. Off went the stereo, and I ran down the street to my mate Gary’s house, ‘You’ve got to listen to this’ I pleaded. So back to my house it was, I ran upstairs, dropped the needle on the vinyl, opened the window and ran back downstairs to the back door. (Mum was funny about letting people into the house, especially the bedrooms. Even my dad couldn’t get a pass some days).
We stood there, mouths open, and then ...we laughed, and laughed, and laughed for all of 35 minutes I think. We weren’t used to listening to such tripe. We loved Ritchie, Ronnie, David of Coverdale, Steve Perry, Hair Bands (now still plying their trade as ‘bald bands/hair weave’ bands). This was the first and last time I had listened to Venom, until now, some 26 years later.
Here we are in 2008 and this is Venom’s fifteenth studio album. Cronos is still at the helm, bless him (Can I say that on a review of a Black metal band?) but nowadays the band is made up of ‘Rage’ now known to me as ‘Mäattåallan’ on guitars since 2007, and ‘Antton’ now known to me as ‘Prïmäarrk’ present on the drum stool since 2000. Unfortunately it’s a total mis-match of reviewer vs album. Me reviewing a Black Metal album is like fellow writer Pete Worral reviewing REO Speedwagon. Riff wise its all OK, but its the grunting you see, it does nowt for me. There’s plenty of bite, I’ll give them that, snarling vocals and bludgeoning metal guitar work. Its not dated, they have not retreated to past glories, but produced an album of current relevance.