With Cronos seemingly completely disinterested in booking dates for 'Venom' in the UK (the last time they played here I believe was at the LA2 in 2006!) the chance to see some Venom songs performed by the next best thing was not to be missed, and actually as the day approached I decided to relisten to the Venom Inc albums and actually found myself really warming to them, especially the first one 'Ave'.
To my surprise, Rose said she wanted to come with me, so we headed up the M1 on this Friday night and arrived to see the last song of Devastator's set. I wish I'd seen a bit more of them, and I wish I'd taken a photo of them too because they were quite a sight to behold. Proper old school bullet belts and (red) corpse paint on one of them. Sounded better than their slightly uninspiring album and they finished with an impromptu jam through the opening bars of Venom's 'In League With Satan'... cool!
In the interval Rose and I spent a bit of time trying to find a good place to stand, bearing in mind last time I was here I ended up getting knocked over! We made our way to the far wall near the soundman, but it seemed oddly warm there so we moved to the backwall where a fan gave us a tiny bit of breeze (though not really enough to notice).
The drummer took his place as the intro to 'Ave Satanas' rang through the building and he was quickly joined by the guitarist and former Venom vocalist/bassist Tony 'Demolition' Dolan. The sound was not great and had I not spent the previous week repeatedly listening to these songs I think I would have struggled to work some of them out. Indeed it took me a while to work out what I was listening to when they played 'Blackened Are the Priests' from 1989's Prime Evil album.
Gradually our ears adjusted, or maybe the sound improved? I'm not sure, but oddly when I recorded 'Live Like an Angel, Die Like a Devil' it came out so clear, I was expecting a complete racket - so maybe it was just too fucking loud! Yes, it definitely was too loud, our ears were still ringing the next day and that hardly ever happens any more.
The setlist was great, and the band concluded their set with a cover of Venom's 'Bloodlust' complete with Devastator's guitarist/vocalist handling the vocals. The band disappeared for a few moments and then came back to deliver a cover of Motorhead's 'The Hammer', an insanely fast song for 1980 and a fitting cover considering there's obviously a fair bit of Lemmy's influence on display here (Tony Dolan's bass was a Warwick, but shaped like a Rickenbacker for a start), not least the ear splitting volume just like in the good old Motorhead days. This, predictably caused an instantaneous mosh pit to break out that ended up with some guy being pushed back into Rose.
The band went off again and returned for one final tune, this time Venom's 'Black Metal', which caused another massive pit to erupt, this time resulting in someone being pushed back into me! At least we didn't both end up on the floor like I did at Pestilence!
All in all it was a great gig, just very very loud... and so far the second best gig of the year after Geoff Tate's performance of Operation: Mindcrime last week.
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