Venom is, without doubt, one of metal’s most significant beasts, this group of Englanders playing a pivotal role in second-wave black metal and also influencing a legion of thrash bands. While its three initial records – Welcome To Hell (1981), Black Metal (1982) and At War With Satan (1984) – are the stuff of legend, it’s At War With Satan that might just be the group’s most ambitious album. In 2014, At War With Satan turns 30, a milestone Venom bass player and vocalist Cronos is happy to discuss.

“I loved At War With Satan at the time but it was really controversial when we first brought it out,” begins an ultra-friendly Cronos.  “People really didn’t understand it.  Only after 10 years of it being released did people say, ‘Oh yeah, At War With Satan is a great album!’ But we went through that 10 years where people told us it was too long and that nobody understood it. They said, ‘Cronos is a Rush freak! He wanted to make his own 2112!’ But what people didn’t understand, and what they understand now, is that we’re a controversial band. And at the time people were saying that heavy metal musicians couldn’t play and that they were shit, so we wanted to show people with At War With Satan that we could.”

And show people it did, as At War With Satan’s almost 20-minute title track spans the entirety of the album’s Side A.

“I’ll write the three-minutes songs,” explains Cronos. “I’ll write the fucking songs the crowds love and will jump around to. But I also want to write stuff that I enjoy as well, and that means being diverse.  I want to write stuff that challenges us, as artists. To be able to just pick up an instrument and just – ping, ping, ping... I don’t get any satisfaction out that. I don’t want to shy away from a challenge. I want to be apprehensive, I want to feel like I should question which notes go where. That, to me, was the point of At War With Satan. That’s why we’ve actually brought some of it in the live set. Because it’s a difficult song to play and it’s difficult to nail it. I don’t want to go through the motions, I wouldn’t be happy doing that. I’ve always said, for me, I want to do the second part of it. I wrote the book that the story is from, and At War is maybe two-eights of that whole story. So I’d like to do the next bit.”

With any anniversary comes nostalgia, something that Cronos freely admits to around At War With Satan.

“ It was a good time because we were a band that quickly went from being nothing to being a band that could then say, ‘We want this, we want that.’ Whereas, with the first couple of albums it was like, ‘This is what you get.’ It was my first sort of taste of power and we fucking redesigned the studio (laughs). We built a big drum booth and everything, and it was great. We thought ‘This is great! When you’re a big rock star, people do things for you!’ (laughs) People were starting to take us seriously, and that’s what I really remember. For me, it was a big turning point. People weren’t just thinking that we were trashy Venom, instead it was like - it’s fucking Venom.  And they are cool. And they do mean business.” 

Cronos describes the context around At Was With Satan as a demanding one, where even great bands often didn’t get a second chance at success.

“At the time, there were a lot of bands who weren’t getting to release that second album or that third album.  Some of them weren’t even getting to release that second single. Bands were going to the studio that I thought were awesome. And yet, they weren’t selling fucking records. People say we did all this groundbreaking black metal stuff, but to us it didn’t feel like that. We were just doing what we wanted. And we were being creative. We trying to challenges ourselves and do something that felt scary because it was different. Safe doesn’t sell, and safe doesn’t have longevity. When you think back, Ozzy is nothing like Alice Cooper, who is nothing like Lemmy, who is nothing like me, who is nothing like Gene Simmons. Each of us characters, we each went and created our own personas. And I feel like that’s missing in today’s music. Where’s the frontman, y’know? You don’t get those larger than life characters anymore. Now it’s

the females: it’s Pink and Lady Gaga! Their stage shows are fucking impressive! (laughs) I would love to have some of that production.”

Though Venom’s long history traces back to the 1980s, the band’s influence during the early 1990s is where things get especially intense. Venom picture discs were the decoration of choice at infamous Olso record shop Helvete, owned by late Mayhem guitar player and founder Euronymous, and Venom records were a seminal inspiration that were played and re-played in the store. Mayhem, Emperor and Immortal, amongst so many others, were directly inspired by Venom while creating the second-wave black metal that is still a life-altering force in the present day. 

“It’s absolutely amazing that they looked to us as inspiration – those guys got it,” Cronos says of 1990s Norwegian black metal. “That’s what we thought was amazing about it. The thing is, I think they should have given themselves a bit more credit. They actually took it a stage further than us, which is exactly the point. They did their take on it. Even if they were covering our songs, they did their take on it. Like if someone covers us and they don’t play the riff properly I say, ‘Great! Play it your way!’  I won’t show you how to play it, what’s the point of fucking recording it the exact same way as us? (laughs) We already recorded it, don’t waste your time. Do a new version. Progress it. And that’s what the Norwegians got, they got that progression. But they should have taken a bit more credit for themselves and called it corpse metal or Norse metal or something. Some of it is amazing, like some of the stuff now like Dimmu

Borgir. It’s fucking fantastic, it’s great. It’s amazing that the Norwegians got it.”