Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Venom Inc.
Label: Nuclear Blast
Released: 2017
Length: 62:01
Rating: 4/5
With albums like this, you hardly know where to start writing. »Ave« by Venom Inc. is really a Venom album, and even though there’s also a band called Venom, Venom Inc. are no less Venom than the ones who go by plain Venom, that is, without the »Incorporated« tag. Still with me? To make the »apparent confusion« even bigger, the three musicians who joined forces as Venom Inc. are very old comrades who recorded three Venom albums together: »Prime Evil« (1989), »Temples of Ice« (1991) and »The Waste Lands« (1992).
Anyway. Venom Inc. came together in 2015, when after a long time, more than twenty years, original Venom members Mantas on guitar and Abaddon on drums completely unexpectedly joined forces on stage. And how did their paths cross? In 2015 Mantas was playing the Keep It True festival with M-pire of Evil, a band where he was joined by another former Venom member, Tony »The Demolition Man« Dolan. When M-pire of Evil came back on stage for the obligatory encore, they called up Abaddon as a special guest to play Countless Bathory (originally a Venom song, of course). The rest is history. That trio grew into Venom Inc.
Venom Inc., who by the way played this year’s edition of Metaldays, have recorded their studio debut, though they could easily have slotted it straight into the Venom discography and counted it as yet another studio album by the legendary Venom. The album runs over an hour. What the hell? Where do these guys get so much music to play? If you go back to the days of total naive sincerity, abrasive rudimentary rawness and sometimes downright painfully noisy racket, which sounded almost primitive in its minimalism and was full of botched notes (we’re talking about the very first steps of Venom, especially the first two albums, of course), it’s honestly strange how much Mantas, Abaddon and Dolan have matured musically over the years. In depth of perception, in technical terms and as songwriters. Most importantly, Mantas has become an extremely skilled soloist in the technical sense, while keeping his sharp knack for delivering guitar phrases with strong expressive character and catchy bite. Every single song on »Ave« has an outstanding tightness, live energy and hookiness, created by this trio through excellent working chemistry. None of this would exist without the seething, ferocious rhythm section, driven by a wild Dolan and an equally beastly Abaddon. These »old boys« really aren’t giving up. “Ave” sounds old-school and homey, yet at times so fierce, crushing and rhythmically thunderous that the riffs race now toward the primordial form of thrash metal (Dein Fleisch, Ave Satanas, War), now toward equally filthy speed metal (Metal We Bleed), and also toward a neat combination of the two (Time To Die). Other times Venom Inc., in their elementary way, slip in elements of rock’n’roll with finesse, and with their relentless droning almost conjure up the ghost of Motörhead from the days when they were a quartet (The Evil Dead, Black N’ Roll). In the excellent I Kneel to No God, with one of the album’s most inventive riffs, you can even detect the old school of Black Sabbath in the »Ozzy era«.
With full vehemence, and with not a shred of respect toward Kronos, completely uncompromising, Venom Inc. carried Venom’s familiar satanic iconography over to »Ave« too, and when it comes to interpreting blasphemy and egging on depravity, Dolan is with his delivery always (at just the right moment) in just the right place.
The band really tried out plenty of different musical ideas on this album, while masterfully carrying over the whole essence and spirit of Venom. The ideas on this album had been brewing for a long time. Some are older and have of course been seriously updated and refreshed. Dolan tears down reinforced concrete walls in all his obsession, ripping through with a throaty, thundering and extremely piercing vocal. It’s not hard to picture Tony teasing the crowd at gigs with his goofy grimaces and sticking out his tongue. »Ave« is played at an outstanding level as a whole. Relentless. Its crushing power is a guarantee that your ears will bleed! It rides on the wings of incredible momentum, commitment, wild impetuousness and the full-blooded, scorching delivery of unbridled passions. As if Mantas, Abaddon and Dolan were at the very start of their career, in 1979 rather than the present.
All things considered, it’s worth drawing a bottom line: Venom with Kronos haven’t released such a primal Venom album in a good while as Venom Inc. have with »Ave«. In that sense, Venom Inc. are three buddies of their generation, while Kronos, in his new line-up, is simply on his own. Maybe that fact alone holds the simple answer to why »Ave« works as authentically »Venomesque« as the last three albums by the »real« Venom certainly don’t. So Venom Inc. have thrown down the gauntlet to Kronos and challenged him! »Ave« expresses the bloodthirsty rage of a blood-hungry beast that, in its raving frenzy, has just snapped its chains and, in utter fury, wants to drink all of humanity’s blood! »Ave« is an extremely honest record that brilliantly fuses Venom’s elemental rhetoric with the sonic production aesthetics of a new age. Something you could never have expected from the »elderly uncles«. That’s exactly why it’s all the more tempting and its value all the greater, since it delivered a quality nobody saw coming. »Ave« is a bullseye that all true Venom fans will grab with enthusiasm! It’s such a strong and special album that it can easily spark interest even among fans of new-generation metal sounds, getting them to gradually start discovering the older era of the rich discography of this colorful, in many ways special and (almost proverbial) pioneering band of the metal universe.
Line-up
Tony “Demolition Man” Dolan – vocals, bass
Jeff “Mantas” Dunn – guitar
Anthony “Abaddon” Bray – drums
Production
Venom Inc.
Tracklist
01. Ave Satanas
02. Forged In Hell
03. Metal We Bleed
04. Dein Fleisch
05. Blood Stained
06. Time To Die
07. The Evil Dead
08. Preacher Man
09. War
10. I Kneel To No God
11. Black N Roll
