Venom - Black Metal (1982)

Black Metal strikes me as the kind of heavy metal music even metalheads won't take seriously. To give you an idea:

"Black is the night, metal we fight. Power amps set to explode!"

Those are the opening lyrics to the title track. Now if you've never heard Venom, you have to imagine those lyrics not really being sung, but kinda barked. I think it goes without saying that this album features a lot of really dark themes. And yelling. Lots of yelling.

Black Metal was really influential in the development of genres such as thrash, death metal, and of course black metal. Oddly modern critics consider this album more as proto-thrash than proto-black metal. Either way, we're talking about subgenres of rock that are really hard to discern. How can an album that features tracks like "Buried Alive," "Leave Me In Hell," and "Heaven's On Fire" not be considered death metal or black metal? It's possible I just have no idea how to separate any songs of these genres. Though I do know grindcore when I hear it.

The albums sounds very thick as opposed to heavy. The sound is drowning in reverb and echo effects probably due to being an 80s album. It's why I'm kinda glad Led Zeppelin didn't survive through the 80s, because they'd probably sound something like this. Their music almost certainly would be better than Venom's but the sound would probably still be just as muddled.

If you like music that lays it really think with death, violence, monsters, hell, and Satan, then Black Metal is right up your alley. To this reviewer Black Metal sounds very forced, as if the artist were serious about making the music dark but just went too far to the point where is sounds ridiculous. Contrast with Scum, my favorite terrible album thus far, which sounds intentionally ridiculous. I can have fun with something like Scum, but something like Black Metal doesn't carry the same kind of joy. 2 stars.