Monday 12 May 2008

Venom - At War With Satan (1984)


The cover is great, leering like some leather-bound Satanic bible, the band once again spewing the filth out of the basement, accompanied this time by seething rats and other fetid vermin. I was always a big fan of this toxic nightmares, Cronos on fine form with his raw ramblings which would inspire Quorthon Seth to form his even more evil Bathory, but Venom started it, somehow taking the blackenings of Sabbath and the spit of the Sex Pistols and wielding it together to make such a deformed gargoyle of sound. Any band whose opening track can stretch for twenty minutes may truly be slightly mental, and the perverted pleasures billowed out here would have had any metaller sweeping the dust from his face time and time again as the rusted waft of 'Rip Ride' burns through the sky, 'Cry Wolf' bubbles like some poisonous lake and 'Aaaaarrrrggghhh' pretty much speaks for itself, a rough, primal experiment in deadly conjuring.

Venom, despite their unholy masks, were there for the party, even if the noise they made sent the children crying.

7.5/10

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