What went wrong with Venom?

Fact: Venom invented extreme metal.  Without Venom, thrash, black, death, metalcore, grindcore, blackened death and everything in between would not exist.  Way more so than Motorhead.  I love Motorhead, possibly my favorite band of all time.  While they do deserve some credit for extreme metal's architecture, Venom is just more important, and I will explain why. Objectively speaking, if you were to make a Top X metal bands of all time, they have to be top 5, possibly in the top 3.   Their influence is so prevalent in everything afterwards that you really don't even notice it.  It's like commenting on the type of wood that forms the skeleton of a house.  Yet reading that top 5 sentence out loud would probably grant more snickers and "ehhhhs" than cheers of approval.  Unfortunately, it seems like history has almost forgotten Venom, despite their first two records, Welcome To Hell released in 1981, and Black Metal released in 1982, providing a solar system spanning foundation from which near every formed band afterwards would build upon.  

So what happened?  Where did Venom go wrong?

Well, it wasn't so much the mistakes they made (although they did make plenty of mistakes), as much as what they didn't do: evolve.  I don't mean they needed to write ballads or become more accessible like Metallica.  In fact, quite the opposite.  They needed to become MORE extreme.  And well.....they didn't.

Let me present a timeline for you.  Black Metal was released on November 1st, 1982.  When it was released, it was purely and simply, the most extreme musical output ever committed to vinyl (miss me with Metal On Metal, Anvil sucked).  The follow up, At War With Satan, was released April 16th 1984.  Between that year and a half, metal would see the release of, among others, Exciter's Heavy Metal Maniac, Satan's Court in The Act, Metallica's Kill Em All, Slayer's Show No Mercy, Anthrax's Fistful of Metal, Hellhammer's Apocalyptic Raids EP, Mercyful Fate's Nuns Have No Fun EP, as well as their debut album Melissa.  Each one of these releases raised the bar for heavy metal in terms of how extreme it could be. Heavy metal was evolving at a much faster rate in the 80s than it was in the 70s when it was, by strict rules, only Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Budgie until about 1976.  

As great as Venom were, their sound was not necessarily based on songs.  When you look at it through a modern lens, yes they are NWOBHM songs alongside Wheels Of Steel, Am I Evil, Sanctuary, etc., but Venom were not songwriters per se.  No Larry King, Venom's tunes are not hummable.  And this is where Motorhead differs from Venom. As over the top as Motorhead was, they still had melodies.  They still had songs you could sing.  You could still sing Ace of Spades, Bomber, Overkill, Killed By Death, Born To Raise Hell and a hoist of others.  Sure there would be the odd tune here and there was Lemmy was just shouting, but those were more the exceptions to the rule.  Venom (specifically lead vocalist and bassist Conrad Lant, a.k.a. Cronos), never sang.  It was always barking, shouting, whatever you wanted to call it.  He always sounded like Satan's general commanding his army from mile high pulpit similar to Saruman and the Uruk-hai.  So the goal is not just to keep writing songs and perhaps hopefully get some pop chart success, you have to raise the bar of extremity even higher.  Almost like trying to beat a speed-runners world record.  Just about every other band figured this out.  Venom didn't.  

The At War With Satan album in question is by no means bad, and frankly the 2112-esque title track is something Venom should be commended for.  But the fact is, to be blunt, it was made irrelevant the second the second Metallica album Ride The Lightning came out, clean guitars and all.  If not that, the self-titled Bathory debut and Morbid Tales by Celtic Frost certainly would have made not just AWWS irrelevant, but Venom near irrelevant as well.  Hell Awaits?  Game over.

Now mind you, a lot of bands did rip Venom off.  The most infamous being Bathory. I love Quorthon, but he's a little bit of an Amy Schumer here. In any other endeavor,  Bathory would have been run out of the business.  But Bathory took extreme metal, and specifically black metal, to a higher level of extremity than Venom ever did and ever could.  Or at least they did for their first four albums before Bathory decided to wimp out change gears to so called "viking metal."  

With the Possessed album about a year later, Venom hadn't really shown any further nastiness, leaving fans start to feel indifferent about the extreme metal Godfathers.  What really didn't help was the fact that there was a band called Possessed, with an album called Seven Churches, which, according to some, was the birth of what we now call death metal (a closing track with that sub-genre nomenclature is a point plus in that regard).  So Venom was not only competing with the established thrash metal, it's children in black metal, but now a third extreme genre called death metal?  Refusing to get more extreme, along with intra-band strife, caused lead vocalist Cronos to exit the band.  Now if Venom were smart and snagged themselves a guttural (or blackened-screechy) sounding vocalist, and transformed themselves in to death-metal, that could have been what they needed to catapult themselves to the forefront of the race.  But instead they ended up with a rather uncharismatic frontman by the name of Tony "Demolition Man" Dolan, released some medicore albums, and faded into irrelevance.  

It's sad.  Again, Venom today feels forgotten by the metal press.   It feels like the only time people remember them is when a member of Metallica wears a Venom shirt.  This is a band that should be held with as much respect as anyone.  And while people/kids today who are serious metalheads discover them eventually, they don't seem like a priority listen.  Probably not even in the first 20 bands someone gets into.  

But here's the punchline: 

There's no denying Venom sounds like classic rock compared to death-core and all the other extreme genres today.  Yet with everyone is croaking about "gateways to extreme metal."  The irony is because Venom sounds so tame, Venom is the best way to get newcomers into extreme metal!  Not Tony Danza Tap dance whatever.  Venom's way easier to get someone into this world rather that typewriter blastbeats, breakdowns and pig-squeals.

MVGA: Make Venom Gateway Again!