Welcome to Hell is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Venom released in December 1981 through Neat Records. After various line-up changes and recording several demo tapes in Impulse Studios, Venom gained success and attention with the single "In League with Satan", their dark, satanic image and their fast, raw sound. The band re-recorded all of the demos' songs, which Neat Records released as an album.
Released during the peak of new wave of British heavy metal movement, Welcome to Hell was initially panned by critics,[1] but later became recognised as an album seminal to the development of the then-nascent extreme metal scene and one of the most influential metal albums of all time. The album was re-released by Sanctuary Records in 2002.[1]
Background
Venom's original personnel came from three different bands: Guillotine, Oberon and Dwarfstar. In 1979, Conrad "Cronos" Lant applied for a job at Impulse Studios in Wallsend as an audio-visual engineer for Neat Records. Impulse would soon become the epicentre for a series of vital recordings from the new wave of British heavy metal movement on the Neat Records label. Lant trained as an assistant engineer and tape operator at the time, working with local bands while simultaneously playing guitar in a band named Album Graecum, which later became Dwarfstar. Lant was soon introduced to Jeffrey Dunn, who at the time was playing guitar for a Judas Priest cover band named Guillotine, and quickly struck up a friendship around their shared vision for creating a "mega-satanic band" who played dark, demonic music and used Satanic imagery. Dunn introduced Lant to his band, and Lant would soon leave Dwarfstar and join Guillotine, where he met drummer Tony Bray during their first rehearsal. Lant would find himself now playing rhythm guitar in a five-piece consisting of Clive Archer on vocals, Alan Winston on bass, Dunn on lead guitar and Bray on drums. The band would soon change their name to Venom after a suggestion by the band's roadie.[2][3]
Writing and recording
Many of the earliest recordings of songs from the album were written by guitarist Jeffrey Dunn before eventual vocalist and bassist Conrad Lant even joined the band in November 1979. Lant introduced them to his original song ideas as he did not want to keep playing the same cover songs, and with Dunn he began writing new songs for the band. Lant had composed songs like "Sons of Satan", "Bloodlust" and "Welcome to Hell", while Dunn had composed songs like "Angel Dust", "Red Light Fever", "Buried Alive", "Raise the Dead" and "Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)". Dunn and Lant redefined together these songs with a mutual collaboration and then, after unsuccessfully trying to convince the managing director at Impulse Studios where Lant was working at the time as a tape operator to allow Venom studio time to record, Lant decided to record one of the bands church hall rehearsals on a basic cassette recorder in late 1979 with original vocalist Clive Archer on vocals, Alan Winston on bass, Lant and Dunn on guitar and Bray on drums. They performed the tracks: "Angel Dust", "Red Light Fever", "Buried Alive", "Raise The Dead" and the band song "Venom". Unfortunately, as the band rehearsed in an old church hall, the sound was not very good.[3]
"So one day at our Church Hall rehearsals I set up an old crappy cassette player and recorded our rehearsal, it was terrible, the hall was way to big, and so the recordings sounded really distant and booming, a right racket, but anyway I played it to everyone at the studio and they hated it, and not surprising as the big church hall reverb didn't do justice to our sound, and we sounded terrible." — Lant[3]
In February 1980, Winston left the band less than a week before they were to play their first show at the Meth in Wallsend on 15 February 1980. Lant then took over bass guitar duties and soon after the band also decided on using stage names since they felt singing songs about Satanism and the occult with ordinary names didn't feel right. The band settled on more formidable and demonic names to better fit their images and their stage personalities. Archer becoming "Jesus Christ", Lant "Cronos", Bray "Abbadon" and Dunn "Mantas". After failing to win over the studio with their church hall rehearsals, Lant was able to convince studio engineer Mickey Sweeney to work a short recording session with the band (for free under the condition that Lant stay back every night in the studio and help him with other sessions) and even managed to persuade record company boss David Wood to get half a day in the studio for free. The recording session took place on 19 April 1980 and the band recorded three tracks: "Angel Dust", "Raise The Dead" and "Red Light Fever". Lant then made cassette copies of the 3 songs and sent them to various record companies, radio stations, music magazines and rock clubs.[2][3] This demo tape is entitled Demon.
"Soon after I came up with the idea of trying to convince the engineer (Mickey Sweeney) to work a short session for free if I'd stay back every night in the studio and help him with other sessions, he agreed, so I now just had to try to persuade the studio boss (Dave Wood) to give me a few hours for free also, again agreeing to do all sorts of extra [unpaid] work around the studio. Eventually, he agreed and this was when I finally got 4 hours session time so we could record the 3 track demo, at last we had a good-ish quality recording our ourselves to play to the world, and I made as many copies as I could to mail out to all sorts of labels and magazines, and one mag in particular was 'Sounds Magazine', which one of the editors; Geoff Barton decided to put all 3 tracks in his weekly play list, and for a few weeks running, he claimed he loved them so much he didn't want 3 different artists like the other journalists put in their play lists, he put all 3 of our songs from the demo tape." — Lant[3]
After some minor attention from local magazines in the summer of 1980 the band returned to the studio after some talks with their label; Neat Records, and it was decided that due to the high amount of volume of bands looking to record at the time the label would put an affordable deal together called the "£50 Demos" allowing each band 4 hours in the studio to record as many live songs as possible straight to 2 track master for £50. However, Lant was unable to get the money, so he again agreed to work long hours in the studio to pay for the session. Once given the go ahead, Lant brought the band in on 10 October 1980 and began recording. Out of the 4 hour session the band recorded 6 tracks: "Sons Of Satan", "In League with Satan", "Angel Dust", "Live Like an Angel", "Schizo" (later retitled "Schizoid") and the band song "Venom". It was during this recording session that Lant was asked to sing lead vocals on "Live Like an Angel", and his bandmates, so impressed by his performance, decided to make Lant their new lead vocalist and Clive Archer was soon let go.[2][3]
"When it was time to record Live Like An Angel Jeff asked me if I'd have a go singing it, I said "Hell Yeah", although at the end of the session we had a band meeting and the guitarist and drummer said that they preferred my vocal style to Clive's. I must say he was very big about the whole situation even though he had in reality just been sacked, he said we could keep his PA for me to sing through, and his parting words were something like; 'I fucking love this band, I really hope you guys make it."— Lant[3]
Venom thus became a trio, with "Cronos" on vocals and bass, "Mantas" on guitar and "Abaddon" on drums. After convincing Neat Records to take a chance and let Venom record a single, the band headed back to the studio in January 1981 and released their first professional recording material, a vinyl, 7" single titled In League with Satan / Live Like an Angel on 19 April 1981, one year to the day that the band recorded their first demo, Demon. Neat Records, impressed with the success and reception of the single, asked the band to record all their material.[4][5] Venom once again returned to Impulse studios in August and over the course of only three days re-recorded all of the material they had, however, the label decided to release these re-recorded demos, unpolished and with little production values. The final product being the band's debut album Welcome to Hell, a collection of demos packaged with a cover.[2][3][4][6]
Music and lyrics
Welcome to Hell features fast tempos, sloppy musicianship and a raw, heavily distorted sound[7] rooted in traditional heavy metal, punk rock and speed metal that was integral on the development of thrash, death, black metal and other forms of extreme metal.[1] Lyrically, the songs explore themes such as hedonism, sexual depravity ("Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)", "1000 Days in Sodom", "Red Light Fever", "Poison"), serial killing ("Schizoid"), drug use ("Angel Dust"), witchcraft ("Witching Hour") and Satanism ("Welcome to Hell", "In League with Satan"). Two tracks contain use of Biblical scripture, with the title track featuring a female voice reciting an extract from Psalm 23 and "1000 Days in Sodom" telling the story of the Biblical city of Sodom and the prevailing depravity and degradation as the city and its inhabitants are destroyed for their sins. The track "In League with Satan" opens with a reversed recording of a demonic-sounding voice using the backmasking technique. When played in reverse, the voice of Lant can be heard saying "Satan, raised in hell, I'm gonna burn your soul, crush your bones, I'm gonna make you bleed, you gonna bleed for me". This is one of the earliest instances of Satanic subliminal messages in music.[4][6][8]
The album cover, designed by drummer Tony Bray, adapted the same graphics for the cover of the single "In League with Satan" / "Live Like an Angel", with different print colours (golden instead of white) and different text. The artwork appears on a black background, with a large golden circular pentacle containing the head of the Goat of Mendes, a stylised Baphomet with a fierce expression; above that is the band logo "Venom" and under the title of the disc in gothic characters. The five-pointed star is in turn circumscribed by two concentric circles; in the space between the two circumferences there are five Hebrew letters, each corresponding to a point on the star which takes on the value of Belial, Leviathan, Lucifer, Satan, indicating Earth, Water, Air, Fire; plus the southern tip which represents man. On the back cover is a photo of the band holding axes on Tynemouth beach near Newcastle. In the very first copies of the disc, a black and white mini-poster of the group was also included.[9]
The album was released in Great Britain on Neat Records in December 1981. Early copies included a pink lyric sheet and a black and white mini-poster depicting the Venom members. The logo of the record company on the various vinyl LP prints varies in colour, ranging from silver to blue, green, white and red.[12]
British journalist Geoff Barton stated in his 1981 five-star review of Welcome to Hell that the album had "the hi-fi dynamics of a 50-year-old pizza", and that it "brought a new meaning to the word 'cataclysmic'".[11] According to AllMusic journalist Eduardo Rivadavia, highlights of the album include "Welcome to Hell", "In League with Satan", "One Thousand Days in Sodom" and "Witching Hour"; Rivadavia said of "Witching Hour": "Possibly Venom's single most important track, in it you'll hear a number of stylistic devices which would later pervade all extreme metal genres, indeed become their most regularly abused clichés."[1] Canadian journalist Martin Popoff wrote that "Welcome to Hell got a certain fabulously stupid impetus to it, despite the sub-bootleg quality recording, and Cronos quickly establishing himself as the most annoying voice in rock"; it should be considered "a record of historical metal relevance", but "not the band's most listenable product".[10]
Tour
With stories of the bands chaotic shows that they were playing in old church halls becoming well known to locals, the band was granted an opportunity to play a show at a sports hall called Maecke Blyde in Poperinge, Belgium. Lant, wanting to get away from the UK to see what the response would be to the band from fans who knew nothing of them, jumped at the chance. The concert took place on 4 June 1982 and was attended by over 3,000 fans, and after a successful show in Poperinge the band now set their sights on the United States.[13]
Legacy
Due to its unpolished sound as a result of it being recorded in only three days, author Dayal Patterson stated that the relatively low-fidelity of Welcome to Hell inspired numerous Norwegian metal bands, who considered it black metal. Patterson says that Welcome to Hell and Black Metal were both the genesis for the black metal genre, with the earlier album "where it was born."[14][15]
In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked Welcome to Hell as 74th on their list of 'The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time.'[16]
The black metal band Mayhem borrowed their name from the instrumental track "Mayhem with Mercy"[17] and covered the song "Witching Hour" on their EPDeathcrush. The German thrash metal band Sodom also reportedly named themselves in reference to the song "One Thousand Days in Sodom".
Hell Awaits is the second studio album by American thrash metal band Slayer, released on April 19, 1985, by Metal Blade Records. The band's 1983 debut Show No Mercy became Metal Blade Records' highest-selling release, and as a result, producer Brian Slagel desired to release a second Slayer album. To that end, Slagel financed a recording budget and recruited several experienced producers to help in the studio.
Venom are an English heavy metal band formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1978. Coming to prominence towards the end of the new wave of British heavy metal, Venom's first two albums, Welcome to Hell (1981) and Black Metal (1982), are considered major influences on thrash metal and extreme metal in general. Their second album proved influential enough that its title was used as the name of the black metal genre; as a result, Venom were part of the early wave of the genre, along with Mercyful Fate and Bathory.
Sodom is a German thrash metal band from Gelsenkirchen, formed in 1981. They have gone through many lineup changes, with bassist/vocalist Tom Angelripper the only constant member. The band is currently composed of Angelripper, guitarists Frank "Blackfire" Gosdzik and Yorck Segatz, and drummer Toni Merkel. Sodom has been referred to as one of the "Big Four" of Teutonic thrash metal, along with Kreator, Destruction and Tankard. Sodom heavily influenced the German black metal scene, and is regarded as a pioneer of death metal. Mike McPadden wrote that the most Venom-blackened of German "Three Kings", Sodom further merged thrash and death metal into a "wicked and decadent sound".
Black Metal is the second album by English heavy metal band Venom. It was released in November 1982 during the new wave of British heavy metal, and is considered a major influence on the thrash metal, death metal and black metal scenes that emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Atomkraft are an English speed metal band from Newcastle, who were part of the new wave of British heavy metal movement. They formed in 1979, disbanded in 1988, and reformed in 2005. Atomkraft's "Total Metal" approach draws inspiration from fellow NWOBHM bands such as Motörhead and Venom, punk rock bands such as The Dickies, and early Exodus or Slayer. Lead vocalist/bassist Tony Dolan also fronted Venom for a number of years in the late 1980s and 90s.
Conrad Thomas Lant, also known by his stage name Cronos, is an English musician. He is the founder, vocalist and bassist of heavy metal band Venom.
Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken is the fifth studio album by Swedish power metal band HammerFall, released in 2005 through Nuclear Blast. It features the track "Knights of the 21st Century", which includes guest vocals from Venom frontman Conrad "Cronos" Lant; it is also the band's longest studio recording to date with a length of 10:25, though after 1 minute and 40 seconds of silence, at 12:05, there is an outtake from Cronos.
At War with Satan is the third album by the British heavy metal band Venom, released in April 1984. It is a concept album that tells the story of a war between Heaven and Hell which the latter side wins. It was touted as Venom's crossover into mainstream music, but failed to do so. Shortly after it went on sale, the HMV record chain withdrew the album from its shelves because of its anti-Christian content.
Possessed is the fourth studio album by English heavy metal band Venom, released on 8 April 1985. It is the band's last studio album to feature guitarist Jeffrey Dunn before his first departure from the band in 1986. At the time of its release, it received mixed reviews, even from critics who had liked Venom's earlier albums; Possessed was thought to be in another league as compared to the band's earlier works, even though much of the material on Possessed was written before the release of its predecessor, At War with Satan. It was the first Venom album recorded outside of Impulse Studios. The song "Possessed" is ranked No. 14 on the Parents Music Resource Center's "Filthy Fifteen", a list of the 15 songs the group found to be most objectionable.
Jeffrey "Mantas" Dunn is a British guitarist and one of the founding members of the heavy metal band Venom, with which he played as a guitarist from 1979 to 1985 and 1989 to 2002. He plays in Venom Inc. alongside fellow former Venom member bassist/vocalist Tony Dolan.
Calm Before the Storm is the fifth studio album by British heavy metal band Venom. The original title of the album would have been Deadline, but the title was changed when guitarist Jeffrey "Mantas" Dunn left the band and was replaced by Jimi Clare and Mike Hickey. Both were to follow bassist Conrad "Cronos" Lant in his later solo career and the latter would also return on the 2006 album Metal Black.
Cronos were an English heavy metal band formed in 1988 by Venom frontman Conrad "Cronos" Lant.
Neat Records was a British independent record label based near Newcastle, England. The label was established in 1979 by David Wood, who was the owner of Impulse Studios in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear. A key figure in the establishment of the label was Steve Thompson. Thompson was house producer at Impulse at the time and helped set up Neat, became the A&R manager and produced all the initial recordings, as well as managing the publishing arm, Neat Music. The label was sold in 1995 to Sanctuary Records.
The Waste Lands is the eighth studio album by British heavy metal band Venom. It is the last with bassist/singer Tony "Demolition Man" Dolan and also the last before the reunion of the classic Venom line-up from their first four albums, Welcome to Hell, Black Metal, At War with Satan and Possessed. Like the previous album, Temples of Ice, the album was originally supposed to be produced by ex-Child's Play producer Howard Benson, however he was once again unavailable so the band decided to stay with Kevin Ridley. The working title for this album was Kissing the Beast, but the band changed it when they got the album cover from Tari József.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a live album released by English heavy metal band Venom in 1986. It contains partial recordings of two different concerts with two different setlists. The first disc contains a show recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in London on 8 October 1985 and the second disc recorded at The Ritz in New York City on 4 and 5 April 1986. The title Eine kleine Nachtmusik is German for "A Little Night Music". The title is taken from Mozart's piece of the same name.
"Countess Bathory" is a song by English heavy metal band Venom. The song originally appeared on the band's 1982 album Black Metal as well as their 1986 live album Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
"In League with Satan" is the first song released by the English extreme metal band Venom. It was released on 17 April 1981 as a single with the B-side "Live Like an Angel" by Neat Records and later appeared on the band's first album, Welcome to Hell. The song has been cited as the first black metal song and is also often cited by critics who claim a connection between heavy metal and Satanism.
"Bloodlust" is a single released by English speed metal band Venom on August 13, 1982 through Neat Records. It is the bands second single and the follow-up to their debut single "In League with Satan".
Warfare was a British heavy metal band from Newcastle upon Tyne that formed in 1982 and disbanded in 1993. They were part of the later stages of the new wave of British heavy metal.
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