Every metalhead has their origin story. This is mine. In the mid-1980s, a friend called from an old landline. They told me about a new band that was heavier than anything we’d heard. They turned on an old cassette deck, inserted a tape, and pressed play. My father was in the other room. Despite the hiss and the phone connection, I heard Venom’s “Buried Alive.” The die was cast; that phone call changed my life.
That moment set off a quest to find the heaviest, strangest, and darkest music I could. I combed record stores and found the old Venom cassettes from Neat Records. I ordered Venom’s Manitou EP. I played the unholy triumvirate of Welcome to Hell, Black Metal, and At War With Satan nonstop. Decades later, I know that many had the same experience. Even today, listeners have a similar awakening when they stumble across Venom online.
Conrad “Cronos” Lant, the voice and bassist behind the classic Venom albums and many that followed, died on October 1 at 63. Despite their austere beginning, Lant and his bandmates are three of the pivotal figures in metal history. Venom’s earliest work found its way around the globe to young metalheads like James Hetfield, Tom Gabriel Warrior and, a decade later, kids exploring dark sounds in Scandinavia. The albums landed with fans in America, Japan, Chile, Mexico and elsewhere. When I discovered Venom, I thought I was the only person who knew the band. It turned out there were hundreds of thousands of us, if not more.
Lant wasn’t Venom’s original vocalist—Clive Archer was. When Archer left the band before a gig at a church, Venom settled on the classic trio of Lant, guitarist Jeff “Mantas” Dunn, and Tony “Abaddon” Bray. Venom didn’t take long to turn heads. Lant was learning a trade through a British government program and worked at Neat Records. He kept bugging studio owner David Wood to record his new band; Wood finally relented and recorded their first single, In League With Satan/Live Like an Angel in 1981. The single took off. From there, Venom recorded Welcome to Hell and upended metal.
It’s impossible to underestimate what Lant, Dunn, and Bray did collectively to change metal’s course. Venom is perhaps best known as the band that took the Satanic imagery already present in the genre and pushed it past all boundaries of taste and acceptability. They also did something far more important; they democratized the music for future generations. Until the early 80s, large studios controlled the sound of what is now considered metal. Venom and Lant’s brash independence and can-do ethos—which shares a similar story to punk—seeded countless underground bands and a few bands that pack arenas. Lant’s unhinged, guttural vocals also became an early blueprint for extreme vocals, from black metal to death metal.
Lant and Venom’s story continued long after their pivotal albums. In the 21st century, Lant continued to record and tour as Venom, while his former bandmates Dunn and Bray launched Venom, Inc. and most recently performed under their nicknames. Despite making music together that changed metal—if not our world to a certain extent—they never reunited or even reconciled. “We are estranged,” Dunn told Decibel in a story on the 40th anniversary of Welcome to Hell. “I think it’s very sad. There isn’t bitterness as much as disappointment. Conrad and I used to be very close.” Because of this strife, Decibel couldn’t induct At War With Satan into its Hall of Fame with the first two albums.
It’s sad that Venom’s founders couldn’t appreciate what they created together. But nothing could ever diminish how Venom shaped metal music. I am writing these words today because of how I felt the first time I heard Lant and Venom. Lant’s pivotal works with Venom are a perennial lesson in how grit and energy trump virtuosity every time and a benchmark for every backyard metal band looking to make a difference. Lant wasn’t just a singer in a band. His voice heralded a revolution in underground music, helped countless teenagers survive adolescence, and paved the road for every metal album that followed. We will raise the dead!
