Welcome to Hell, indeed! (Welcome To Hell - Venom)

Member Name: annallon

Product:	Welcome To Hell - Venom
Date:	29/06/09 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Aggressive/raw intensity, album lasts for 40 mins or so, very influential album

Disadvantages: Not entirely suitable for the non-metal/rocker, it may prove to be too heavy for their ears.

Welcome to Hell- Venom
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Venom is regarded as the fathers to black metal; when in reality they were a New Wave of Heavy Metal band with black metal 'imagery'; any metal band today, you can trace it back to its origins: Venom. That is how much Venom in its early days influenced the entire metal world. The three main bands at the time- Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Motorhead was doing their music and Venom just blew them away in terms of creativity and speed, and paved the way for new bands to come along later. All bands afterwards (in death, thrash and black metal) took its raw intensity and aggressiveness influence from Venom and put their own creativeness to shape the two metal genres today: thrash and black metal.

Now; the album. It is where the term black metal was taken and created an entire new genre of metal: Black metal. That is all Venom is responsible for; for the term of the genre, not the sound. This debut album, in my opinion had bigger influence on thrash metal rather than black metal but I won't get into that. This album was truly ground-breaking in its day, when it was released back in the early 80s.

The song-writing in its most parts is fairly simple but Cronos gets his point across and successfully creates a fore-boding atmosphere with his songs such as 'Witching Hour'- the best song on the album in my opinion, the lyrics is fairly simplistic but creates a spine-chilling song. For the most part of the songs, it begins with a paragraph, then chorus, then a new paragraph. Slightly formulaic.

The sound of this album sounds as if it truly intended to sound raw; the muggy and raw sound of the guitars, which are a bit out of tune, perhaps. I wasn't expecting to be hit by rawness intensity and aggressiveness from this band.

The album is just a non-stop ride of guitar solos that just squeals along with 'thrash-y and energetic that only can be compared to punk' riffs filled with Cronos's snarling vocals. The combination does not sound amazing but until you actually hear it for yourself, you will enjoy it.

However, there are some limitations; in the abilities of the musicians in the band; they haven't rehearsed it enough before recording this album, the riffs in the album could be more complex and the drumming is just...there, not inspired but it doesn't really distract the listener away from the songs.

Even with all the cons that I have listed, the poor production, the simplistic lyric themes and the raw-ness seems to have worked in Venom's favour. And I can see why it has.
Stand-out songs on the album: Witching Hour, 1000 days in Sodom, Live like an angel.

To show how good this album is today, it was released over 20 years ago and it is still held with the upmost respect in the metal world. It still has influence over many bands today, it was truly ground-breaking.

Summary: Ground-breaking album that mainly defined the metal world as it is today