By Christopher David<\/p>\n
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal (or NWBHM, as it came to be known in the late \u201880s) was a movement that will always be a bit mysterious to many American rock and metal fans, for a few reasons.<\/p>\n
Often, records were hard to find in America in the pre-Internet days, and this writer spent many a teenaged weekend scouring record stores for releases by Motorhead, Saxon, Angelwitch\u2026the list goes on. For every Iron Maiden, there were ten other more obscure bands who put out great records as heavy metal found its feet and identity in the late \u201870s and early \u201880s. Inevitably, then, many of the NWBHM bands are seen as setting the course for heavy metal as we now know it.<\/p>\n
Venom sits at the top of that particular peak: chaotic, frenzied, and inarguably raw, the Satanic royalty of heavy metal, spawning progeny far and wide. Slayer, Bathory, Watain\u2026no black metal band on earth would exist as they do today without Cronos, Mantas, and Abaddon taking us all to hell and back over the course of several skull-crushing records exploring every aspect of evil deviance.<\/p>\n
The \u2018legend\u2019 of Venom, if we can go there, was heightened by the fact that they were selective about live performance, only bringing a scant handful of live shows to America in the grand scheme of things (the first of which, in New York, blew the P.A.s to smithereens the second they hit the stage) and they were unpredictable. Following their first two seminal records\u20141981\u2019s Welcome to Hell<\/em> and 1982\u2019s genre-defining Black Metal<\/em>\u2014they released a third album that featured a near-20 minute title track – not exactly typical. Venom was, in the words of guitarist Mantas, \u201cpure fucking mayhem.\u201d<\/p>\n So perhaps it made sense when they imploded just a few records in, returning in 1990 with Tony \u201cDemolition Man\u201d Dolan taking bassist\/vocalist Cronos\u2019 place to release Prime Evil,<\/em> a surprisingly polished and produced affair by comparison. Prime Evil <\/em>was followed by two solid records \u2013 Temples of Ice <\/em>and The Wastelands<\/em> \u2013 before Venom again called it a day.<\/p>\n But musical genres run in cycles, as we know, and as the lucky Venom fans at Reggie\u2019s Rock Club learned on Monday \u2013 the time has come again to put the horns in the air. 1990\u2019s incarnation of Venom \u2013 drummer Abaddon, guitarist Mantas, and bassist\/vocalist Tony \u201cDemolition Man\u201d Dolan \u2013 has returned as Venom, Inc. to once again remind us of why a little evil in heavy metal – or a lot of evil, actually – is a good thing. (The \u201cInc.,\u201d incidentally, is due to Crono\u2019s version of Venom, which continues to tour and release records as well.)<\/p>\n Delivering a 17-song set of Venom classics, the newly reformed trio leveled the place with an energy that harkened back to the early days. The no-frills approach to staging \u2013 a simple backdrop with the band\u2019s familiar pentagram logo \u2013 suited the razor-sharp focus on nothing but music and connection with Venom\u2019s fiercely loyal audience. (Truthfully, I can\u2019t think of a metal show I\u2019ve seen in recent memory in which fans were so invested in every single song<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Venom\u2019s approach to live performance was always reliant more on bombast than nuance, but the Dolan years brought a renewed focus to the band\u2019s delivery, and that’s still the case. Drummer Abaddon (who has apparently been commissioning portraits of himself for the attic, as he doesn\u2019t look to have aged a day, shirtless and sunglasses-clad) and bassist Dolan maintained a tight, thunderous rhythm section, and Mantas, a bleached-blonde, riff-shredding dervish, took every opportunity to mix up classic leads alongside fresh takes. The set was a take-no-prisoners assault of material from the band\u2019s first two albums (except for opener \u201cPrime Evil,\u201d which fit right in), and they even took the opportunity to dig deep for main-set closer \u201cSons of Satan,\u201d which, fittingly, was the first song on the first Venom album, and had never been played live previous to this tour. The rarely played \u201cRaise the Dead\u201d built a perfect bridge from fan-favorite \u201cBuried Alive,\u201d and \u201cWarhead\u201d had a blazing, edgy quality that easily trumped the studio version. By the time the encore arrived and the band tore through a string of classics (see setlist below), the floor of Reggie’s had descended into chaos, to the obvious delight of the band members.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to forget that Venom\u2019s riffs and song structures are, ultimately, classic rock n\u2019 roll more than flashy attempts at thrash or anything experimental; there\u2019s a primal satisfaction in Venom\u2019s hooks and chord progressions not unlike the classic rock bands of the 1960s \u2013 there\u2019s just a bit more blood and fire involved. There was as much singing along from the crowd as you’d see at a Rolling Stones concert, which isn’t typically the case with a band like this, but Venom have never been typical.<\/p>\n Which, ultimately, is one of the many reasons that I’ve always found myself drawn back to them, even in the face of new and upcoming bands. For the same reason I love the Beatles in the grand scheme of rock n’ roll, I love Venom in the grand scheme of heavy metal, and there is everything to love, as a metal fan, in this current incarnation and tour. All hail.<\/p>\n For more on the band, tour and albums, click here<\/a><\/p>\n For photos from the show, click here<\/p>\n