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Vote for VENOM!


Valfar

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I have always listened to Venom from time to time, but it never was a "huge" band for me, so i am leaning towards "indifferent". It´s one of those bands i love to listen to but if i never heard them again i wouldn´t necessarily miss them badly either. In my 20s when my partying was at it´s craziest, i used to play "You´re all gonna die" to my neighbours, just to annoy them. I haven´t actually listened to anything new from them since Cast in stone.. maybe it´s time. Black metal as a song and album is an interesting phenomenon, can´t deny its importance. It has been covered so many times that hard to keep track (Vader version is my favourite, because of course it is!).

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Venom's first three are excellent! Haven't heard anything else by them. Once read that the fourth, Possessed, is pretty good too. I love how their sound was the link between NWOBHM and the Black Metal to come. Also love the heavy punk influence, as I was really more into punk before I totally got into metal. I once new some people that insisted that Venom weren't BM, that they simply coincidentally used that name before real BM existed. I say that's a load of bs, what do you guys think? 

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There is that argument Venom lack the common traits of black metal. Many who make that argument refuse to acknowledge any first wave BM bands though. Personally I never bought into that argument. The progression of a genre does not preclude those who spawned it.

Precisely. I think most teenagers checking out the genre online are confused when it comes to this because they just straight to Norwegian 2nd wave black metal because of the notoriety, and then branch out straight into the modern stuff because that's what's popular right now. Also, they're probably coming from other musical backgrounds, so all of this post-rock/black metal fusion stuff is a lot more tame territory to enter into than more vile modern interpretations of the genre. Either way though, they don't go back to explore the roots of the sound, and think that the root of black metal is in the blast beats and tremolo riffs. This simply isn't the case, as anyone familiar with the genre for more than the last couple of years since they hit puberty can attest.

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On 02/02/2017 at 11:58 PM, RelentlessOblivion said:

There is that argument Venom lack the common traits of black metal. Many who make that argument refuse to acknowledge any first wave BM bands though. Personally I never bought into that argument. The progression of a genre does not preclude those who spawned it.

I'm actually a little surprised to see you singing Venom's praises to such a high degree, especially back in 2012. I don't know, I just didn't have you pegged as a Venom fan for some reason. 

I should say firstly that I really haven't heard much of them after 'At War with Satan' so I'm loathe to comment too strongly. 

I do have a lot of respect for them as trailblazers. I only own 'Black Metal' on CD, although I've played it a lot over the years and I do like it. I can't say I get genuinely excited by them though. I think the things that let me down with them are actually the things that their fans really like, such as the rough around the edges feel and care free thrashy approach and NWBHM attitude. It just doesn't affect me the way it clearly affects others. 

I'm more of a Bathory man, myself, although comparisons are odious.  

 

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Wouldn't have been a Bathory without Venom though. I very much enjoy both bands. I was a Venom convert early on hence the loyalty. As you said the thrashy no-frills musical approach is appealing. Lyrically they aren't anything special.

True. Quorthon claims he had never heard Venom when he recorded his debut, and I call bullshit.

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10 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

You do have a penchant for selective reading...

That's easy for you to say. You should try reading forum posts in Castle Requiem's gloomy environs. It's a miracle I can make out anything you semi-literate dilettantes say....

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So ... this is probably blasphemy to A LOT of people ... but I never liked the new singer in Iron Maiden. Meaning that they stopped making sense to me after Killers. Paul Di'Anno had a very different style from Bruce Dickinson, with his more menacing stage presence, in combination with lyrical contents that explored the grey area between Gothic novels and British 70s "kitchen sink realism". I was very disappointed with the Number album, liked the Piece one a little better, but finally abandoned Maiden when they released Powerslave. Fortunately, Venom came in from left field, to save the day. (If we are to play the "if no X, then no Y" game, I'd have to say "if no Motorhead, then no Venom".) 

It was inevitable that someone would start using the phrase "black metal" because this is an old name for iron. (Consider how for instance a silversmith works with silver, whereas an iron worker is traditionally called a blacksmith.) Trying to explain what happened by terms of "genre labels" and in hindsight will probably not give anybody the right idea about what was happening in the scene at the time. In my opinion, Venom was NWOBHM, end of. They were in the scene, at the time, and delivered the harder, edgier, dirtier stuff that the afore mentioned Maiden abandoned as they decided to become big rock stars instead of the rock'n'roll rebels they came off as to begin with. (My very first impression of Maiden was when they played support for Kiss in 1980, in the first ever Kiss concert -- old style, full rigged circus of flames and paint -- in Norway. They made Kiss look like dinosaurs, which, to be fair, they also were at that time, but they were a proper rock'n'roll outfit when I first heard them, in 1975.)

Anyway, Venom covered a "market niche" that had been left open by the more rock star oriented guys. Genre thinking may obscure that somewhat. Metal was supposed to be rebel music for punk ass kids ... or at least, that was how some of us felt about it. We didn't want "Rainbow on stereoids", we wanted our own thing.

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19 minutes ago, MaxFaust said:

It was inevitable that someone would start using the phrase "black metal" because this is an old name for iron. (Consider how for instance a silversmith works with silver, whereas an iron worker is traditionally called a blacksmith.) 

Sorry? Wut?  I find this a very loose interpretation, happy to let you post any articles or references that back this up though.

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So ... this is probably blasphemy to A LOT of people ... but I never liked the new singer in Iron Maiden. Meaning that they stopped making sense to me after Killers. Paul Di'Anno had a very different style from Bruce Dickinson, with his more menacing stage presence, in combination with lyrical contents that explored the grey area between Gothic novels and British 70s "kitchen sink realism". I was very disappointed with the Number album, liked the Piece one a little better, but finally abandoned Maiden when they released Powerslave. Fortunately, Venom came in from left field, to save the day. (If we are to play the "if no X, then no Y" game, I'd have to say "if no Motorhead, then no Venom".) 
It was inevitable that someone would start using the phrase "black metal" because this is an old name for iron. (Consider how for instance a silversmith works with silver, whereas an iron worker is traditionally called a blacksmith.) Trying to explain what happened by terms of "genre labels" and in hindsight will probably not give anybody the right idea about what was happening in the scene at the time. In my opinion, Venom was NWOBHM, end of. They were in the scene, at the time, and delivered the harder, edgier, dirtier stuff that the afore mentioned Maiden abandoned as they decided to become big rock stars instead of the rock'n'roll rebels they came off as to begin with. (My very first impression of Maiden was when they played support for Kiss in 1980, in the first ever Kiss concert -- old style, full rigged circus of flames and paint -- in Norway. They made Kiss look like dinosaurs, which, to be fair, they also were at that time, but they were a proper rock'n'roll outfit when I first heard them, in 1975.)
Anyway, Venom covered a "market niche" that had been left open by the more rock star oriented guys. Genre thinking may obscure that somewhat. Metal was supposed to be rebel music for punk ass kids ... or at least, that was how some of us felt about it. We didn't want "Rainbow on stereoids", we wanted our own thing.
The aesthetic and tone that you're describing with Venom would be indicative of darker and/or more extreme metal of many varieties, but Venom were the first to explore the black metal path because of their sound. The reason for them making the song could have been talking about being heavy as iron, or that their brand of metal was more "black" and evil sounding as the lyrics to the song seem to indicate, but I think the crucial thing to remember is that the bands that followed them who called themselves "black metal" did so because they were willfully following in Venom's footsteps. That energy, speed, harsh vocal style, and the way they phrased their riffs and used a darker style of chord progressions is what sets it apart from heavy metal. Some might argue that the separation isn't far enough, but then have no problem with saying that Black Sabbath's debut is the first heavy metal album despite containing a large number of blues songs. It seems like the mentality is mostly fostered by the internet age who don't understand the evolution of the genre, and can't discern the connection between the Norwegian sound that came 10 years later and the progenitors of the style.

Anyway, Venom is killer, at least on their first 3 albums. While I don't share your disdain for the rest of Maiden's 80's canon, I do prefer the Di'Anno albums. They were going for something different with Bruce, and they had to, his voice wouldn't have been a good fit for their raw early sound. It wasn't the most seamless transition, but I think they had it dialed in by Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

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Iron will turn black when you apply wax to it while still in the forge (resulting in a smooth, black surface). It was what they did to protect it against rust back in ye aulde days, before they figured out that whole "stainless steel" thing. I shall make a disclaimer though. English is not my natural language and they may not be using the word in the same way as in Norwegian, although I fail to see any other rational reason for why the iron-smith is called blacksmith. I could also be wrong. It happens every once in a funeral moon. (Don't they call parts of the Midlands "the black country" because of coal dust? Some image-transfer may be going on.)

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