Today I am reviewing one of the albums that helped to create thrash metal and by extent black metal, this album is Venom's debut album Welcome to Hell. While they have punk influences they take it to a whole new level by adding a thrash feel but maintaining themselves as a speed metal band. The music is loud fast and powerful and thus really awesome, at the time it took metal to a new extreme. The guitar is really nice and has a lot of really great riffs and some decent solos. The bass is fast and keeps the power up, and the drums are really good and rarely get too repetitive. The vocals, are probably among the first death growls ever done and the lyrics are dark and satanic. All in all this is a great album with a guitar that pretty much started thrash.
Listening to the guitar on this album makes me think of the classic Big Four thrash riffs. And guess what band all of the members of The Big Four cites as a huge influence? Venom. Yes, while Venom was pretty much a speed metal band they are also possibly the biggest influence on thrash metal. The main guitar riffs sound exactly like early thrash metal. The solos are not very thrash-like though, they are less skilled and make no incredible impact on the album. The bass is really powerful and helps keep the songs bombing a long when things are slowing down. The drums are hard fast and powerful and in general really nice. One thing that should be noted about Venom's punk feel is that they did not care if they made mistakes, they themselves acknowledged that they were not awesome musicians, however they produce an amazing vibe. My only complaint about the instruments asides from the lack of technical skill is that the music sounds a bit thin at times. However the awesome vocals usually make up for that.
The vocals are probably among the earliest death growls. They are different in style than those of Lemmy, whereas Lemmy kind of did a form of barking which only a few others mimic, Cronos though pretty much invented the death growl we know and love today. His growl sounds like that which we hear in our modern thrash. This album pretty much allowed black metal to be possible and the main reason for that was that Cronos made death growls work. His singing is powerful and frightening and it gives a really good feel to the music. It makes you feel like something new and amazing is happening which will change music forever. The lyrics are also okay, while they are nothing spectacular they are very dark and remain serious. However many critics claim that they are simply being sarcastic, which would make the band even cooler.
All in all, this is a great band with an amazing sound and feel. They pretty much created thrash metal and black metal, this is one of the bands that started everything. It is rather cool to hear this album and consider all of the stuff that they influenced, one might say that this album completely changed the direction of a lot of heavy metal music. The guitar is really cool, and you have to remember that it pretty much created thrash metal with its mighty and fast riffs. The bass is very solid keeping the songs chugging along. The drums are really good sounding, they are filled with power and thus are very impressive. The vocals, they are revolutionary and indicate a whole new direction of music. Overall this is a really revolutionary album, which does have some drawbacks. In general though, this album takes 'the buzz' to a whole new level.
OVERALL 9/10
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