Review Summary: A fitting farewell, if this is Venom’s last album
Venom’s influence is one of heavy metal’s great ironies. Their gloriously coarse racket helped inspire generations of musicians, many of whom would pursue a degree of technical precision scarcely imaginable on those early records. Listening to them, you could almost conclude that learning to play properly was optional. Jokes aside, Venom understood how to turn speed, provocation and a strong punk instinct into something addictive. They made Motörhead’s rock ’n’ roll nastier and more quarrelsome, helping British heavy metal find a particularly disreputable route into thrash and black metal. And although they took the occasional stylistic detour, they rarely strayed far from their unruly roots or lost that boisterous exuberance.
Into Oblivion, their first studio album since 2018’s
Storm the Gates, benefits from a lineup that had been together for seventeen years. Cronos, Rage and Danté sound comfortable in one another’s company, and the record holds together well enough to rank above several of their post-2000 efforts. Its heavier, groove-led writing also shows how much Venom can do without relying entirely on frantic speed.
The production of this record sounds deliberately rough. Bass, distortion and gravelly snarls belong in this grubby company. Rage has described recording without a click track or sampled kick drums, letting the musicians push and pull the tempo as the songs demanded. That decision suits Venom’s chaotic manner. Some listeners will find the sound excessively crude, which is understandable, but smoothing it out could have removed part of what makes it such a fun listening experience.
Cronos’s bass propels the music with a thunderous insistence, especially on the title track. His demonic bark is still unmistakable, while the slower grooves let him vary his delivery beyond a continuous growl. Rage, meanwhile, brings a more contemporary flair to the lead playing than the band’s reputation for primitivism might suggest. The melodic construction of
Man & Beast and the atmospheric solo in
Nevermore reveal an interest in something beyond the usual barrage. The first half is worth hearing, but the second contains Venom’s more inventive writing.
That breadth extends to the heavier material. Venom retains their first-wave black metal grime, but draw freely on other branches of metal and the rock ’n’ roll frantic that lies beneath them.
Death the Leveller combines Motörhead’s swagger with a little Judas Priest flash, while the Sabbath-like brooding of
As Above So Below favours a slower, more oppressive attack. The clipped crossover thrash of
Dogs of War belongs comfortably in the same collection. Those shifts in idiom help distinguish songs whose underlying structures are fairly simple.
More interestingly, the impact, occasionally, seems to run in reverse. The jagged riffing of
Live Loud recalls the later black metal of Darkthrone, and the eerie introduction to
Unholy Mother suggests the Scandinavian scene that grew out of Venom’s original provocation. There is something amusing about hearing the founders echo their descendants. It also helps explain why
Into Oblivion does not sound exclusively devoted to the early eighties. The trio can acknowledge subsequent developments without surrendering its own filthy habits.
The second half makes better use of that flexibility. This side proves why Venom developed such a devoted fan base; Even four decades in, the trio still grinds on, crafting riffs so sinister they'd make even Tony Iommi envious. The relentless, evil-sounding guitar work proves true metal never ages - it only sharpens its fangs. Danté’s drumming becomes less predictable, and the quirky breaks in
Kicked Outta Hell and
Unholy Mother briefly interrupt the usual charge. Those deviations are among the things I enjoy most here, and the concise arrangements help them work. Thirteen tracks occupy roughly forty-four minutes, with only two exceeding four minutes. Venom fit several ideas into these short songs without prolonging every digression. These peculiar turns can leave its audience wanting more, and I would have liked the band to pursue that experimentation more often.
Venom leans a bit more heavily on their past when it comes to the lyrics. Their blasphemous pantomime is so ingrained in metal’s vocabulary that it no longer carries the shock of their early records.
Lay Down Your Soul openly revisits
Black Metal, and the nostalgic slogans invite recognition more readily than surprise. The jokes can be entertaining. Their ability to make a straightforward chord progression sound sinister has a similar drawback. Repeated often enough, those threatening harmonic shapes begin to resemble a gimmick, making the menace rather predictable. It is a good latter-day Venom record, but calling it a new classic would be another matter.
Cronos’s death has since given the album an unintended finality. It was the last studio record Venom released during his lifetime, and it may prove to be the band’s farewell. Their career had its share of setbacks and disappointments, but none can diminish what they brought to British heavy metal or the countless extreme acts that followed. Their legacy was carved in stone long before this release. If Venom do stop here, they leave us with a respectable record that does their rowdy reputation justice.
Recommended tracks:
Man & Beast
As Above, So Below
Kicked Outta Hell
Legend
Metal Bloody Metal
Unholy Mother
