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40 year anniversary of extreme metal


Dead1

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40 years ago Venom pretty much invented extreme metal with the release of Welcome To Hell.  Not even Motorhead or Iron Maiden compared to this album in terms of extremity, bombast and shock.  It literally kicks off the ultimate Cold War arms race as to who can be the most extreme band on the planet. 

 

Thrash, death, black and grind can all trace important roots to this album.

 

https://youtu.be/dVFBDE6Ms8w

 

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  • Dead1 changed the title to 40 year anniversary of extreme metal

You know it's funny I never liked Venom. I remember 40 years ago hearing on the tv news about how they were this big sensation in the UK and how they were Satanic and Evil and all the kids were queuing up to go see their shows. I remember hearing little snippets of their music on the actual nightly news programs, but only for a few brief seconds. Intrigued, I grabbed their album with the goat head on it at the used record store one day for like $2 at a time when it was still a new release. There were several copies available, seems a bunch of people had traded theirs back in already. I got it home and put it on and my friend and I just laughed 'cause it was just so fucking bad, sounded like they were out of tune. The next time I went to the record store I traded it back in myself.

But the thing is they did basically start what has become known as extreme metal almost single handedly, (Motorhead had a hand in it too) even though they could barely even play their instruments back then. So while I still can't even listen to Venom themselves, I pretty much worship every band that they've directly influenced. 80's bands like Celtic Frost and Bathory and Blasphemy that came right out and said they were inspired by Venom and now also the plethora of more recent "goat metal" and black metal bands that all trace their roots directly back to Venom and the first wave of black metal.

So all hail Venom and the 40th anniversary of extreme, black and Satanic metal. I'd wish for another 40 years of Satanic filth but I won't be around to hear it in 40 more years.

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I probably first started listening to Venom because of the image they had created. Not many radio stations here in the 80's were playing metal but the few that did played Witching Hour and Black Metal fairly heavily. Then our late night music show started playing the clips every few weeks so it became more about image and the visual look than it was about the music. They did influence a lot of our local music scene, bands that didn't make it much further than pub gigs and the odd EP. Not really sure what Venom have done since the 80's (other than beard oil) but I remember listening to Storm The Gates and not being overly impressed.

 

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Metallica guys were often spotted in Venom t-shirts.

 

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Like most pioneering albums, Welcome To Hell was certainly not perfect.  But then if you think about it even first Black Sabbath album drops the ball on the second half (mainly an extended jam cause they had no material), Possessed (Seven Churches) , Napalm Death (Scum) or Carcass with the shit sounding Reeks of Putrefaction.

 

Personally I enjoy Welcome To Hell.  It's got some great tracks - "In League With Satan," "Live Like An Angel," "Poison," "One Thousand Days in Sodom," "Welcome To Hell," "Angel Dust" and "Poison."

 

I am a fan of Venom though including some of their later 1980s and early 1990s material such as Prime Evil.  I also enjoyed From The Very Depths though was disappointed my CD wouldn't play a lot of the time and got rid of it.

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9 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

Didn't Venom suffer one of those band bust ups where two sides couldn't agree and they essentially went their own ways making two similar bands and that's where Venom Inc came from?

Jeff and Tony had a band before called Mpire of Evil with different drummers. Then Abaddon came back into the fold and they started Venom Inc. I think Abaddon got kicked out in 2018. Venom's line-up has changed multiple times for years and years...

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It's that new trend of fighting over legal naming rights after bands have gone through a lot of lineup changes.

 

Apparently Mantas let Cronos use Venom though has since regretted it.

A couple of articles about the album from Celtic Frost's Tom G. Warrior as well as Jeff "Mantas" Dunn himself.

 

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2021/12/06/it-changed-everything-tom-gabriel-fischer-on-welcome-to-hell-at-40/

 

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2021/12/06/we-were-the-spark-venom-celebrates-40th-anniversary-of-welcome-to-hell/

 

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I think this is one of those "You had to have been there" bands. Objectively, Venom are aweful. I can see they're an important legacy band with tons of inspiration for coming bands, but they're just not enjoyable at all. Same as with Death, maybe I would enjoy them if they were one of the first bands I heard, but now I feel there's just so much better bands playing the same style.

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6 hours ago, Sheol said:

I think this is one of those "You had to have been there" bands. Objectively, Venom are aweful. I can see they're an important legacy band with tons of inspiration for coming bands, but they're just not enjoyable at all. Same as with Death, maybe I would enjoy them if they were one of the first bands I heard, but now I feel there's just so much better bands playing the same style.

Agree about Venom but I don't understand lumping Death in with them in this way. Death had distinctive, memorable songs, great lineups with killer musicianship, always pushed forward and stayed creative. Love those last four albums in particular. A far cry from Venom's schlock 'n roll.

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7 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Agree about Venom but I don't understand lumping Death in with them in this way. Death had distinctive, memorable songs, great lineups with killer musicianship, always pushed forward and stayed creative. Love those last four albums in particular. A far cry from Venom's schlock 'n roll.

I agree that they are 2 different animals. I respect them both for different reasons (Venom - originated a style/attitude, Death - musicianship/creativity), but honestly I've never really been into either band. I agree with @Sheol on the time and place thing. Both bands had a bigger impact when they were fresh and new vs. looking back in retrospect. I'd say that's true for most of the classic bands whether it's Possessed, Celtic Frost, Metallica, or Mayhem. Don't get me wrong, I like all of those bands and remember when most "hit" or I picked them up very young. A twenty-something today looking back at them now probably wouldn't be as impressed especially with the dearth of great bands out there now who took those early influencers and built a better product on that foundation.

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23 minutes ago, navybsn said:

I agree that they are 2 different animals. I respect them both for different reasons (Venom - originated a style/attitude, Death - musicianship/creativity), but honestly I've never really been into either band. I agree with @Sheol on the time and place thing. Both bands had a bigger impact when they were fresh and new vs. looking back in retrospect. I'd say that's true for most of the classic bands whether it's Possessed, Celtic Frost, Metallica, or Mayhem. Don't get me wrong, I like all of those bands and remember when most "hit" or I picked them up very young. A twenty-something today looking back at them now probably wouldn't be as impressed especially with the dearth of great bands out there now who took those early influencers and built a better product on that foundation.

I'm not so sure about that last point in the current climate of all these 20-somethings venerating the "classics" and playing throwback metal, especially given the number of complete Death fanboys I've come across. I didn't like them when I was first getting into DM. Still don't get as much out of their early albums. I started appreciating them when Individual Thought Patterns finally clicked while I was in college. It's the later prog death period that really sets them apart for me, and I still love it all, even though I've heard it a bazillion times. I think they've been beaten into the popular consciousness as One Of The First Death Metal Bands and they're so oversaturated that their stuff functions as entry level gateway DM, and I can understand being put off by all that. Or, you know, even just not liking it on the merits. 

As far as newer bands doing it better, I tend to cringe when I hear newer tech DM going on little Death excursions, although I like some of the more self-conscious "90s prog death" stuff I've heard when I'm in the mood. I understand the larger point about finding more enjoyment or relevance in bands that use the building blocks for something new - that's how I feel about a bunch of classic bands myself... just not Death.

I'm gonna be a vocab snob for a second and say I'm guessing you mean the opposite of "dearth"... Something like "wealth" or "plethora"?

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30 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I'm gonna be a vocab snob for a second and say I'm guessing you mean the opposite of "dearth"... Something like "wealth" or "plethora"?

Yup, too much writing today and getting my terms mixed up.

I see your point about Death (maybe not the best example for making that point). No one has really topped what they did and the imitations are indeed cringe worthy. TBH, most progressive death I hear is pretty bad. It just seems to be the hardest mix of styles to get right in my opinion. I probably buy the least amount of music in this particular subgenre. Not to say there aren't a lot of good examples of getting it right, just a lot of bad ones.

As for the kiddies digging old school bands, I wouldn't disagree. I'm just saying that those bands just don't have the same impact as they did when they first broke and absolutely no one sounded like them. 

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5 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Agree about Venom but I don't understand lumping Death in with them in this way. Death had distinctive, memorable songs, great lineups with killer musicianship, always pushed forward and stayed creative. Love those last four albums in particular. A far cry from Venom's schlock 'n roll.

Hah. I like the first 4 Death albums. So I guess Human is where we intersect. I can't say love, but I enjoy them well enough when the mood strikes. Symbolic has is moments too. The only one I completely ignore for the most part is ITP. I would rank them roughly in order of their release with SBG being my favorite and so on down the line. Obviously I like them for totally different reasons than you. Even with my not being aware of the band at the time in the 80's because I was busy playing with my Overkill, Testament, Celtic Frost and Slayer records I can look back from a later vantage point and see that Chuck played a very key role in advancing the state of the art cutting edge of metal and helping it make that transition from thrash to death.

So I think that's probably what Johan meant when he compared these two bands. The two bands have nothing in common musically, but they were both doing something very "different" and they were both "extreme" well ahead of their time. Both bands were largely responsible for the invention of whole new sub-genres which is a pretty big deal even if 40 years later I'd say neither of them are generally thought of as the best and most classically quintessential examples of what those sub-genres (namely black & death metal) would go on to become.

 

 

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Yup, Human rocks. It took me a while longer to warm up to it, but I enjoy it just as much as the later ones now. I even like Spiritual Healing from time to time but don't put it on much. I don't hate the first two or anything, just not really where I'm at. I think when I was first trying to get into Death they weren't "death metally" enough for my taste, funny enough.

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On 12/9/2021 at 5:07 PM, FatherAlabaster said:

Agree about Venom but I don't understand lumping Death in with them in this way. Death had distinctive, memorable songs, great lineups with killer musicianship, always pushed forward and stayed creative. Love those last four albums in particular. A far cry from Venom's schlock 'n roll.

No it's not about ambition or skill, but rather that it's bands I've never liked, no matter how important or influential they were. The music just kind of sucked.

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1 hour ago, Sheol said:

No it's not about ambition or skill, but rather that it's bands I've never liked, no matter how important or influential they were. The music just kind of sucked.

Oh well... one person's trash is another's treasure. I remember a time when I didn't like them either, and there are plenty of bands I feel that way about, so I get it. But I think you're missing out. Also, like them or not, I still don't think it makes sense to lump them in with Venom as an objectively silly/inferior band that just happened to acquire "legendary" status through the accident of having a cool sound in the right place at the right time.

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On 12/10/2021 at 3:07 AM, FatherAlabaster said:

Agree about Venom but I don't understand lumping Death in with them in this way. Death had distinctive, memorable songs, great lineups with killer musicianship, always pushed forward and stayed creative. Love those last four albums in particular. A far cry from Venom's schlock 'n roll.

Venom wrote very distinctive songs.  I would say theor best songs are more memorable than Death's.

Ironically Death's most important and pioneering album Scream Bloody Gore isn't that far removed from Venom.

 

(I also thing Death peaked with Leprosy but that is another story).

 

As for killer musicianship, no dount Venom weren't the greatest but you don't jave to be a virtuoso to make great music.  Seriously Sex Pistols Never Mind The Bollocks is one of the best damn albums rver made IMO but they certainly weren't talented musicians - hell Sid Vicious could barely play).

On 12/13/2021 at 2:36 AM, FatherAlabaster said:

Oh well... one person's trash is another's treasure. I remember a time when I didn't like them either, and there are plenty of bands I feel that way about, so I get it. But I think you're missing out. Also, like them or not, I still don't think it makes sense to lump them in with Venom as an objectively silly/inferior band that just happened to acquire "legendary" status through the accident of having a cool sound in the right place at the right time.

Theu onvented a whole new sound and style of metal.  No one went that extreme before Venom.  They created the whole overt Satanic aesthetic that became so pivotal to the genre.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/9/2021 at 4:07 PM, FatherAlabaster said:

Agree about Venom but I don't understand lumping Death in with them in this way. Death had distinctive, memorable songs, great lineups with killer musicianship, always pushed forward and stayed creative. Love those last four albums in particular. A far cry from Venom's schlock 'n roll.

I don't agree with what Sheol has said either. I've only really listened to spiritual healing. What an album. Just gets better the more I hear it. I like that record alot as there's just so much going on and variety too. Probably should listen to the other albums too as I like prog so later albums I may like. I've heard people say Chuck was the first to sing the way he did so part of what Sheol said could be right.  

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