Venom.

An important band in the history of heavy metal. You don’t need incredible musicianship if you can play “good enough”, fast enough, loud enough, and have a good gimmick (Satan always works, especially back in the 1980’s). In fact, I remember the PMRC just loving Venom, calling some of their songs recipes for Satanic worhip and other such nonsense.

The term “tongue-in-cheek” seems to have been overlooked.

I mean honestly… look at this video for “Witching Hour”

It’s silly!

I remember seeing this exact video on the “Ultimate Revenge Combat Tour Live” video and just how… well… silly it was. You couldn’t take it seriously. It’s just terrible. But hey… it rocks! And back then, if it pisses off or scares your parents, that makes it all the better, right? 😉

Speaking of that tour video, the Exodus and Slayer portions seemed to be actual tour footage at Studio 54, but the 2 Venom clips looked like they were filmed elsewhere and (badly) produced (watch carefully in the above YouTube video, at the end you’ll see there’s words coming out but Cronos’ lips aren’t moving). But then during the video, they had backstage interviews that looked to be in the same dressing room as the Slayer interview. I always wondered about the production quality of that video. But still, it’s a classic. I probably still have the VHS lying around somewhere….

To be complete, here’s the other performance by Venom from that tour video, “Countess Bathory”