In the middle of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Venom brought something different.
Although they had the grit of Motorhead, hearing Cronos wail was the musical equivalent of Hell opening up.
While Venom planted the seeds for thrash metal later, Kirk Hammett had to admit that he wasn’t completely sold on what they were doing.
Despite Metallica’s early Venom influences, Hammett said that the band was a little corny saying,
“Maybe they were super corny… I don’t know. Speaking very realistically and soberly, you know – why would I do something like that? With Venom, they’re just like a bad horror movie. You suspend your disbelief, you lower your quality a little bit. And once you do that, you’re in for a really great time.”
The members of Venom tend to agree to a point. When asked about their influences, Cronos talked about playing up the spectacle saying,
“We used to say that Venom was all of our favorite bands thrown into a pot and mixed up. It was the stage show of KISS, the lyrics of Sabbath, the speed of Motorhead, and the look of Judas Priest.”
While Cronos saw some of Venom’s influence on thrash, he didn’t want to take credit for it saying,
“I think it was inevitable. Punk had died. Metal was lame. There could only be one new way to do this…for metal bands to get some balls again.”
Once Metallica started to blow up, Cronos remains proud of his influence on the scene saying,
“People say that first Metallica album sounds like the first Venom album. That’s where they started to get their ideas from. Then they developed their own style and went out, put a lot of hard work in, and fucking the rest is history. So it’s great that they started off wearing ‘Welcome to Hell’ shirts.”
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