Artist: Venom
Title: From The Very Depths
Genre: Extreme Metal
Release Date: 26th January 2015
Label: Spinefarm Records
Album Review
The problem, or the challenge if you will, is that bands like VENOM compete against themselves. When they started, back in 1979 they managed to make a brilliant gem out of necessity and in 1981 their debut ‘Welcome to Hell’ hit the world of metal with a sucker punch. With questionable technical skills at the time and with a poor production but nonetheless fast, very fast songs, and unremitting lyrics the band had a meteoric rise. And in 1982 they came back with ‘Black Metal’ that was so influential that even if you put everything else aside you have to consider that it was good enough to baptise a new genre of music.
But now it is 2015 and some things have changed. For starters Extreme Metal isn’t what it used to be as it has embarked on its own path. In this climate, the references to Satan hardly raise an eyebrow and the whole revolt against modernity looks and sounds like a pagan fuck festival of disappointed middle-class adolescents celebrating their juvenile spirituality and faux rage. And VENOM managed to look and sound like the last romantics of this tormented by peer pressure scene in its séance to brutalisation. Secondly, Metal is dead. In terms of Art that is. In other words there are good bands, good albums, or good songs (and I suppose there will always be) but Metal doesn’t express and thrill the audiences the way it used to be. Lingering between being a piece of a museum and a kitsch shit, Metal has maintained the charm Rococo has. You can adore it but you don’t create anything in this style. Or let’s check out the other dead dodo of the music industry; Rock’n’Roll. By the end of the Cold War what used to be associated with Rock’n’Roll and its branches was over, continuing to live on a certain momentum that nonetheless, at times, sounded obsolete and passé and the whole youthful rebellion expressed through this music turned to be caricaturesque. Under these circumstances VENOM themselves do not have the power and maybe the ability to reinvent their image, to offer a new direction not only to their sound but of Metal in general. Maybe I’m asking too much from them. They did exactly that once in the past and for almost every other band that’s one time too many.
Thankfully their recordings have been improved considerably, and even if you have a crap cassette player like the one I used to have back in the 80’s when I listened for the first time to the ‘In League With Satan’ you’ll be able to enjoy their songs. At the end I wouldn’t call this album good. I would call it neither bad nor mediocre. It is a strange hybrid that has its good moments, songs like ‘The Death of Rock’n’Roll’, ‘Temptation’, or ‘Long Haired Punks’ that will gain their position in any future playlist of the band and will keep the fans happy. What it seems to be missing are these 34 years that have passed since the release of their first album.
Tracklist
01. Eruptus
02. From The Very Depths
03. The Death of Rock’n’Roll
04. Smoke
05. Temptation
06. Long Haired Punks
07. Stigmata Satans
08. Crucified
09. Evil Law
10. Grinding Teeth
11. Ouverture
12. Mephistopheles
13. Wings of Valkyrie
14. Rise
Line-up
Conrad ‘Cronos’ Lant – bass, vocals
Stuart ‘La Rage’ Dixon – guitar
Danny ‘Dante’ Needham – drums
Websites
www.venomslegions.com
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 6
Sound: 8
Total: 7 / 10
Comments powered by CComment