SUCK OUT THE VENOM!

SUCK OUT THE VENOM!

FEATURES

Andy Hughes

Geographically, the northern England industrial wasteland of Newcastle-onTyne is a distance of some 360 miles from London. Culturally, it might as well be the dark side of the moon. Its notable features? Its high unemployment level, the friendliness of its inhabitants, the incomprehensible local accent and a band called Venom.

Aside from a few local fans, Venom are practically unknown in their hometown. At home, they hang around in the same pubs and clubs they’ve always enjoyed, with the same friends. No superstar ego trippers here. This level of anonymity stretches the length of the British Isles— Venom can move freely without fear of being mobbed by hysterical fans or idolizing metal freaks.

How does a band as big as Venom manage to live this double life—megametal heroes in the States, virtual unknowns in Newcastle? Simple. They’ve never played a gig in their hometown. Not one.

‘‘It sounds calculated,” confesses Abaddon with a cheerful grin, ‘‘and we did calculate it to a degree, although none of us are professors by any means! We knew that our style of metal wouldn’t crack shit over here, so we never bothered to try it. You have to be Americanized to sell a light in this town.

‘‘In a nightclub, if a deejay played a Foreigner record, for instance, about 300 girls would dance around and think it was great. Put a Venom track on, and they’d all clear off—and about 30 mutants would crawl out of the woodwork and go apeshit for three minutes, and then piss off to the bar for the rest of the night.”

This character assessment is delivered with the cheerful accuracy of a man who has learned one of modern music’s hardest lessons—know your market. As far as Venom are concerned, their market beckons from across the Atlantic, the land of opportunity, mom’s apple pie, Uncle Sam, the jelly bean kid and thousands of Venom freaks. Why?

The reasons are varied—the most obvious one being that Venom are leaders, not followers, in heavy metal style. Where they lead, other (American) bands are delighted to follow. Kronos explains.

‘‘We released our first album, Welcome To Hell, and then we did Black Metal and loads of kids bought those albums and wondered what the hell they’d stumbled onto. The kids I’m talking about are now in bands called Metallica and Slayer and Exodus, bands like that. There’s a whole movement coming up that’s doing what we did on those first two albums. Some of them, like Slayer and Exodus, are American bands, and they’re out there gigging in the States, and they wear Venom T-shirts, and the kids go to their gigs, see the shirts, buy a Venom album, and think ‘what the fuck is this? When are Venom coming to the States?’ Those bands will tell you that the whole idea of black metal, speed metal and all that didn’t happen until we started happening in the States.”

Black metal, speed metal? It sounds like an entire subculture, which is exactly what it is. In Britain, it’s strictly on an underground scale. Venom fans listen to the records, and go to watch bands like Iron Maiden and Dio. In America, Venom fans see Venom, in considerable numbers. The novelty is that the band have built up such a vast following without any record releases, aside from imports. The reason for that is not hard to ascertain if you’ve ever watched Venom in concert.

“There’s a Polish band who play our sort of stuff. — Abaddon

‘‘We’re a band of extremes,” Abaddon understates by way of explanation. ‘‘We do smash guitars, we do spit blood, we are the loudest, we are the heaviest, we are the fastest, we are it, you know?”

I’m beginning to. In the midst of a style of music that enjoys hype and overkill as its staple diet, the Newcastle lads manage to walk it like they talk it—or in their case, like they thrash it. They admit to being hard men, but they seem so friendly I find it hard to imagine them strutting around the Bronx daring any neighborhood psycho to try his hand. Abaddon cheerfully concludes that he doesn’t look for trouble, but he doesn’t run away from it either.

‘‘We live in a tough area. This is a tough town, and you have to be able to handle yourself. You get bands from the Bronx and similar areas with a reputation for being able to mix it, well, here when you get into the north, and towards Scotland, you have to be able to take care of yourself. We’re not frightened to go out and mix with a gang of skinheads, and I think that sort of confidence is where stage presence, if you’re going to have any, comes from. We have done a lot of heavy satanic stuff on our first records, and some people wonder if we get our style from black candles and all that. But that’s in the music. Our stage style comes from being able to look after ourselves, whether it’s down to looking right onstage, or walking down the street. I’m not scared to walk around with long hair, or the name of my favorite band written on the back of my jacket, because I’m worried that some skinhead is going to hassle me.”

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For the uninitiated, “skinhead” is a British animal that roves in packs wearing cropped hair and large boots which are used to kick the stuffing out of anyone who offends his sense of well-being. Metal fans are a prime target for roving gangs of skinheads. In Newcastle, where everyone is a couple of notches tougher, skinheads are a very nasty species indeed. Even so, if / were a skinhead, I wouldn’t chance my boots with Abaddon or Kronos—chances are, Venom eat skinheads for breakfast!

But back to the music, which has been drawing massive crowds to Venom gigs, even without the back-up of an American release.

“We do have one there now,” corrects Abaddon. “Our last album has gone out to the States. We’ve done four albums altogether.

“It’s an independent label distribution, because the label put up so much money, they were competing with the majors. All the majors wanted us to be just another act on their label—but this indie label will be pushing us so hard because they’ve got everything riding on us. People have mortgaged homes and sold cars to get the money to sign the deal.”

Signing with an independent label in America is in keeping with Venom’s attitude about their careers at home. In Newcastle, they’re signed to Neat Records—which is based in Newcastle, and a galaxy away from the Londonbased music industry in England. With that city’s press contacts and sophisticated style, it’s a scene that Newcastle natives profoundly distrust.

“We don’t want some snotty label boss telling us what to do!” Kronos mouths with heartfelt defiance. “We’ve always said we will look like this, we will do this onstage, we will sound like this—and of course people have tried to tell us we can’t do those things, but we are here to bend the rules.

“Every now and then, there’s a change in music, because a band has the balls to say to a major company ‘Look, fuck you, I’m not your puppet.’ That’s what major companies always want to do, they want to be able to say This is our new act,’ and control every move. But not us. We control what we do.”

Aside from the control of their career on a musical level, Venom have also learned the value of a little judicious press exposure. As the British press (Londonbased and therefore looking down its collective nose at Venom’s success) is all too keen to find excuses to say something nasty, the American media seem fascinated with the phenomenon that is sweeping their country with low-key but inexorable progress.

“We did make the national television news,’’Abaddon recalls. “We were booked in to play a show at a disused rail terminal in Buffalo. It was a massive venue, it was supposed to be for about 5,000 people. The day of the gig, we did some record store appearances, and when we got to the gig, we found the stage was nearly 20-feet high, and anyone further forward from about 30 feet wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. We knew it wasn’t on, so we pulled out of the gig, and there was a riot outside. A couple of TV news teams appeared and wanted to know what all the fuss was about. They were told it was because Venom had pulled out of a gig, and they were all going ‘Venom? Who the hell are they?' They couldn’t figure it out at all! If it had been Bowie or Grace Jones or Alice Cooper, fair enough, but a riot over this band called Venom? Anyway, it was on the six o’clock news, which is nationwide in America. We tend to get a lot of press for not doing very much.”

“Of course the British press tried to twist it ’round!” interrupted Kronos angrily. “They tried to imply that we’d pulled out because we hadn’t sold enough tickets. Bastards'.”

Keen to steer away from the press, I turn the conversation back to the band’s phenomenal success as a live act in the States. Kronos gave his theory on the subject.

“You can go and see loads of bands and not really remember them the next day. We don’t like to gig like that, we want people to wake up the day after and think ‘what the fuck was that all about?’ When we play live, it’s not just a gig, it’s an event!”

Abaddon continued: “We started off in medium theaters in the States, never less than two-and-a-half thousand seaters— so on our next tour, we are looking to move into bigger venues. Plenty of other British acts have to go over as a support, or doing small clubs, so we’ve done very well. A lot of it has been word-of-mouth and import sales. Our first three albums sold about 40,000 each on import, which isn’t a lot, given the size of the States. Then again, for an independent label operating out of Newcastle, it’s still pretty impressive by our standards.”

For anyone who is intrigued by the success story of Venom, or those who’ve already experienced the band on a live basis, the good news is that they should be back in the States and gigging in the early part of 1986. In the meantime, they’ve got the novelty of playing their first ever British tour—their one and only live gig here to date has been the prestigious London showcase of the Hammersmith Odeon. Not bad for a first effort, huh, Abaddon?

“Not bad at all. We’ve been told we’re playing gigs in places like the Manchester and Birmingham Odeons—and they are the prestige gigs in the Midlands and the * north of England. And here in Newcastle, we’re doing the City Hall for all our local fans who can come and have a real good headbanging time for a night, instead of listening to Foreigner down at the local disco! We still can’t believe it. I met Mantas at a Judas Priest concert there, and we used to see people like AC/DC when they played there as well.”

As well as British dates, Venom are due to wow their friends in Poland—fans who appear to hold them in great esteem, according to Kronos.

“There’s a Polish band who play our sort of stuff and they do 25,000-seaters, and they are supporting us, so we’ll do at least that size of venue.”

All this for a band of Newcastle lads who are glad to have money in their pockets, when they come home to a town with some of the highest unemployment statistics in the country. Even The Boss struggled to sell out here—lack of cash rather than lack of interest. Are you rich, then, Abaddon?

“Well, we’re making money, but it goes back into the band. We’re buying lights and gear and so on. We spend a lot on tour, as well. We like to have a good time on the road. And we put the crew up in hotels as well, that’s 15 people altogether. We figure they work their balls off for us, we should repay them with decent accommodations. When the money does start to come in, it won’t be a few hundred pounds, there's going to be a lot of cash. We’re not driving 'round in flash limousines yet, but who knows? After the next tour, maybe?”