Venom, the one fronted by Conrad “Cronos” Lant, is working on their first new record since Storm The Gates in 2018. In an interview at Wacken over the weekend, Cronos said the band’s new album was impeded by the pandemic but they’re back to work on it. He also added there will be more Venom shows coming up, but nothing in the way of a tour.
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“We had a bit of a hassle because of the pandemic; we couldn’t meet in the studio and all that sort of shit,” said Cronos. So that knocked everything all to hell. If that hadn’t happened, the album would be out by now. But we’re just doing the fine tuning, really, and working on individual shows for now. Venom have never been a big touring type of band. We like to just pop up and blow the place to hell.”
In a recent interview, former Venom guitarist (and current Venom Inc. guitarist) Jeff “Mantas” Dunn said he’d like for the band’s Black Metal to get back together to celebrate the album’s 40th anniversary this year. The Black Metal lineup was Mantas, Cronos, and drummer Anthony “Abaddon” Bray. Mantas left the band in 2002 and would eventually form Venom Inc. with Abaddon, who would leave the group in 2018.
“I’ll never retract anything I’ve said, because I’m sorry but it’s true,” he said. “Regardless of what him or him thinks, it’s true; it’s just as simple as that. I’m not gonna go out there and blatantly talk a lot of bollocks like one of us did. What I’ve said is absolutely true, and I’ve put it in print — into the book as well. It’s there. It’s absolutely true. But we’re at that age now — I’m 60; Bray’s, like, 61; Conrad’s what — 58, 59? We’ve just been through a massive fucking pandemic where nobody’s done anything. We’ve got fucking a war in Europe at the minute. [All the issues we’ve had with each other], it fucking pales into insignificance; it’s fucking bollocks.
“Like I say, I’ll never fucking say ‘sorry’; I’ll never fucking turn around and go, ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t fucking mean that. What I said was fucking true. But we missed the 25th anniversary. We didn’t celebrate the 30th anniversary. And it’s, like, for a band who had such a fucking impact… And, again, my friends, I still find it difficult to take in myself, people saying…
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“When I did the interviews for the 40th anniversary of Welcome To Hell — there’s another anniversary we fucking missed; nothing done about it; it just passed. But the thing was, I got these interviews in, and people were saying to me, ‘You just don’t realize the importance of what you did.’ I don’t, because I suppose we were so close to it. I’ve said it a million times — I was just a fucking kid writing tunes in my fucking bedroom living with my mom, and I was lucky; people fucking dig them.
“But it’s, like, could we not just fucking celebrate this for once? I mean, fucking hell — I’ve already died once. And fucking you haven’t got long, and you haven’t got long, because I know what you’ve fucking done to yourselves.”
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