Venom, heralded as the founders of black metal and a crucial influence on countless other sub-genres, are pushing the edges of their own rather extreme parameters on their 16th album, “Into Oblivion,” out this Friday. Stuart “Rage” Dixon, the guitarist who has been with the group, fronted by Conrad “Cronos” Lant, for 17 years, calls the new record “a lot more dangerous” than its predecessor, “Storm the Gates.”
“There’s a lot more progressiveness,” he says. “We’ve sort of moved the goalposts of what Venom can do. There’s a lot of anthemic songs on it. There’s a lot of epic songs on. There’s sort of different avenues of songwriting on this album. There’s a lot more ambient sort of bits, like the spooky bits are spookier, the faster bits are faster. I think we’ve sort of unleashed what we can do as songwriters.”
Founded in Newcastle, UK, Venom burst onto the scene with its debut album “Welcome To Hell” in 1981 and the following year released “Black Metal,” which gave the genre its name and ratcheted up the Satanic content was the bane of ’80s parents and churchgoers the world over. It underwent a series of lineup changes before settling on the current configuration of Cronos (bass and vocals), Rage and Danny “Dante” Needham (drums).
“Into Oblivion” was only announced in March, along with the first single, “Lay Down Your Soul,” before the second one, “Kicked Outta Hell,” came out in mid-April. It will be less than two months between the announcement and the full album release on May 1, but the LP has been a long time coming. “Storm the Gates” was released seven and a half years ago, before COVID shut down the music industry.
Additionally, Rage says, “Round about the end of the recording of that, Dante actually ended up having to go and get spinal surgery. So we ended up getting a young gentleman called The Jackal in to fill in and do some gigs that year. So we sort of didn’t get enough time to maybe change things, because obviously [Dante] was incapacitated on the drums.”
With Dante back in fighting shape, the trio was able to experiment on the new album, both sonically and lyrically. For example, on “Nevermore,” the work of Edgar Allan Poe is explored.
“Cronos has been trying for quite a while to try and merge that in without it sounding cheesy and a little bit predictable,” says Rage. “And ‘Legend,’ that song’s about a legendary tale up here in the northeast of England where these two giants who were brothers used to battle each other on the River Tyne. So we’re trying to just expand songwriting, expand lyrics, expand what we can do as players. So it’s a bit night and day really.”
Rage adds with a laugh: “I wrote more songs on this album than I did on the last one. So personally, I obviously enjoy it better.”
On Thursday, free, pre-release listening parties will be held to celebrate “Into Oblivion,” featuring giveaways, including the chance to take home a signed set of test presses at every event. New York City’s heavy metal headquarters, Duff’s, in Brooklyn, will host an event at 9 p.m., while the others will be held in London, Milan, Paris, Sao Paolo and Hamburg.
Rage, who has attended similar events as a fan, including for Slayer’s “Diabolus in Musica” in 1998, says Venom will not attend any of the listening parties, saying it is more fair to not show up to any rather than just one. However, the band will sign records at an in-store event at Raven Records in Camden, London, on Saturday at 1 p.m.
Especially in the ’80s, metal bands faced pushback from religious groups for alleged Satanic content, which often was absent or barely hinted at. Venom, however, has written pro-devil, anti-God songs for decades. It’s 1984 album “At War With Satan,” whose cover is festooned with an upside-down cross, is based on a story Cronos started when he was in school, in which the dark side prevails and throws God into hell. The record was pulled from the shelves of the UK music retailer HMV.
Satanic heavy metal is less shocking today, when reality — videos of school shootings, brutal car accidents and war readily accessible online — is just as scary. But issues do crop up for Venom from time to time.
“Well, we just did a photo shoot down in London and we weren’t allowed to say what the band was called. It was in a crypt and you weren’t allowed to have blasphemy or anything like that. So the record company were like, yeah, if anybody asks what the name of the band is, just say it’s called Into Oblivion.”
The jovial metalhead takes a live and let live approach when it comes to people’s beliefs.
“There’s a lot of religious bullshit going around, you know?” he says. “I don’t believe in any of that. I’m a staunch atheist. If people want to believe in whatever, the Spaghetti Monster, to make them get through the day, [that’s fine]. But it’s when they start to press it against people, that’s the bit, you know what I mean?”
Growing up near Newcastle, Rage and his music-obsessed friends who wanted to start bands were told “oh, you can’t do that. You’ve got to go to London.”
“And then all of a sudden you had Venom, Tygers [of Pan Tang], Raven, there’s all these bands. There was a massive explosion of metal bands in the Northeast,” he says, noting they’d see Cronos drinking at the Mayfair Rock Club, “but we were far too polite to speak to him. We used to walk past and go, ‘Hello, Cronos. Are you all right?’ And then just disappear.”
Like a lot of metalheads, Rage still wears his influences on his sleeve — and on his walls. While we chatted via Zoom, he proudly pointed to his “wall of fallen heroes”: posters of Paul Kossoff from Free and Paul “Tonka” Chapman from UFO. “And then I’ve got Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore, Slayer and all that.”
While Rage makes his playing extreme metal, he also indulges in some surprisingly lighter fare, like the Carpenters, the former American sister and brother duo, and the Cardigans, the Swedish pop group known for the hit “Love Fool” (“They’re absolutely awesome, and the guitarist has got one of the really old Marshall amps, which is amazing.”)
Rage says Venom is working on finalizing festival dates, starting in June. Coming to North America will be a challenge, however.
“The visa problem, you know, we’ve noticed there’s a lot of bands having trouble. I think there’s another British black metal band who had to cancel some dates at the start of their tour because of visas, and I know it’s happening with you guys over that side. Anthrax had problems years ago, Forbidden just canceled their European tour. It’s becoming profitable for governments, but not for bands. It’s like nine grand for three visas.”
The guitarist says Venom’s record label, BMG, is being “very proactive” with album promotion and he hopes the band and label find a way to make a US tour feasible.
“We haven’t really played the States as much as we should have. And yeah, we’ve got a lot of fans over there, but like I’ve been saying in interviews, we’re just like vampires. We need to be invited. We can’t just come in, you know, we need someone to say you can come over the threshold, and then we’ll come in and drain your blood.”
Photo by Necrohorns
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