Black Metal History Month - Venom : "Black Metal"

 

This is for all practical purposes the album the genre took its name from. It gets credited by influencing a great many of today's black metal artists, but is it any good?  I was really into it as a teenager, but I was also more into punk then, and Venom much like Motorhead straddles the line between being a punk band and a metal band.  The first song is a anthem with a punk drive to it, very straight forward and works off its energy and attitude. The same can be said for " To Hell and Back". It is not until "Buried Alive" that they actually convey darkness. There is a very rock n roll feel to the groove the guitar solo is over. " Raise the Dead" sounds like an extension of  of "Buried Alive" but it is like a faster dynamic the song would have built into. 

"Teacher's Pet" is more punk and lyrically pretty silly.  "Leave Me in Hell" is a rock n roll ripper that makes more sense black metal could have evolved from, though going back to listen to it this could be a pumped-up AC/DC on more high voltage drugs.  "Sacrifice" picks up where that song left off, though there is a darker malice to this one. I think here is where it bears mentioning, that Venom was always just playing around with the occult imagery for shock value, much like Slayer, and that it can be felt in the more party flavor of the music, where a Mercyful Fate or even Celtic Frost album has a more tangible darkness to it. There is a more Van Halen like sense of adventure in the guitar for "Heaven's on Fire".  It is another song that gets caught up in the momentum invoking more of a punk sound than Satanic one. 

Perhaps the blackest song on the album is also the album's best "Countess Bathory". This lyrically as more Hammer Horror feel, but the chorus has the album's best vocal hook. Cronos snarls his way through this entire album like an ill-mannered pirate, with "Buried Alive" being one of the rare moments where some other feeling is conveyed by his delivery. They end the album on a metal note with the riff to "Don't Burn the Witch" being pretty impressive with the menace it carries. I will round this one up to a 9.5, not making a flawless classic, but merit's much of it's hype for a reason that can be heard here, I think it is just as much of a punk album as it is a metal one, but only scored that high as they care about song wirting more than your average punk band.