Welcome to Hell

Venom's original personnel came from three different bands: Guillotine, Oberon and Dwarfstar. In 1979, Conrad "Cronos" Lant applied for a job at Impulse Studios in Wallsend as an audio-visual engineer for Neat Records. Impulse would soon become the epicentre for a series of vital recordings from the new wave of British heavy metal movement on the Neat Records label. Lant trained as an assistant engineer and tape operator at the time, working with local bands while simultaneously playing guitar in a band named Album Graecum, which later became Dwarfstar. Lant was soon introduced to Jeffrey Dunn, who at the time was playing guitar for a Judas Priest cover band named Guillotine, and quickly struck up a friendship around their shared vision for creating a "mega-satanic band" who played dark, demonic music and used Satanic imagery. Dunn introduced Lant to his band, and Lant would soon leave Dwarfstar and join Guillotine, where he met drummer Tony Bray during their first rehearsal. Lant would find himself now playing rhythm guitar in a five-piece consisting of Clive Archer on vocals, Alan Winston on bass, Dunn on lead guitar and Bray on drums. The band would soon change their name to Venom after a suggestion by the band's roadie. ==Writing and recording==

Many of the earliest recordings of songs from the album were written by guitarist Jeffrey Dunn before eventual vocalist and bassist Conrad Lant even joined the band in November 1979. Lant introduced them to his original song ideas as he did not want to keep playing the same cover songs, and with Dunn he began writing new songs for the band. Lant had composed songs like "Sons of Satan", "Bloodlust" and "Welcome to Hell", while Dunn had composed songs like "Angel Dust", "Red Light Fever", "Buried Alive", "Raise the Dead" and "Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)". Dunn and Lant redefined together these songs with a mutual collaboration and then, after unsuccessfully trying to convince the managing director at Impulse Studios where Lant was working at the time as a tape operator to allow Venom studio time to record, Lant decided to record one of the bands church hall rehearsals on a basic cassette recorder in late 1979 with original vocalist Clive Archer on vocals, Alan Winston on bass, Lant and Dunn on guitar and Bray on drums. They performed the tracks: "Angel Dust", "Red Light Fever", "Buried Alive", "Raise The Dead" and the band song "Venom". Unfortunately, as the band rehearsed in an old church hall, the sound was not very good. Venom once again returned to Impulse studios in August and over the course of only three days re-recorded all of the material they had, however, the label decided to release these re-recorded demos, unpolished and with little production values. The final product being the band's debut album Welcome to Hell, a collection of demos packaged with a cover. ==Music and lyrics==

Welcome to Hell features fast tempos, sloppy musicianship and a raw, heavily distorted sound rooted in traditional heavy metal, punk rock and speed metal that was integral on the development of thrash, death, black metal and other forms of extreme metal. Lyrically, the songs explore themes such as hedonism, sexual depravity ("Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)", "1000 Days in Sodom", "Red Light Fever", "Poison"), serial killing ("Schizoid"), drug use ("Angel Dust"), witchcraft ("Witching Hour") and Satanism ("Welcome to Hell", "In League with Satan"). Two tracks contain use of Biblical scripture, with the title track featuring a female voice reciting an extract from Psalm 23 and "1000 Days in Sodom" telling the story of the Biblical city of Sodom and the prevailing depravity and degradation as the city and its inhabitants are destroyed for their sins. The track "In League with Satan" opens with a reversed recording of a demonic-sounding voice using the backmasking technique. When played in reverse, the voice of Lant can be heard saying "Satan, raised in hell, I'm gonna burn your soul, crush your bones, I'm gonna make you bleed, you gonna bleed for me". This is one of the earliest instances of Satanic subliminal messages in music. ==Artwork==

, a symbol used as the insignia of the Church of Satan The album cover, designed by drummer Tony Bray, adapted the same graphics for the cover of the single "In League with Satan" / "Live Like an Angel", with different print colours (golden instead of white) and different text. The artwork appears on a black background, with a large golden circular pentacle containing the head of the Goat of Mendes, a stylised Baphomet with a fierce expression; above that is the band logo "Venom" and under the title of the disc in gothic characters. The five-pointed star is in turn circumscribed by two concentric circles; in the space between the two circumferences there are five Hebrew letters, each corresponding to a point on the star which takes on the value of Belial, Leviathan, Lucifer, Satan, indicating Earth, Water, Air, Fire; plus the southern tip which represents man. On the back cover is a photo of the band holding axes on Tynemouth beach near Newcastle. In the very first copies of the disc, a black and white mini-poster of the group was also included. ==Release and promotion==

The album was released in December 1981 by Neat Records in the United Kingdom. Early copies included a pink lyric sheet and a black and white mini-poster depicting the Venom members. The logo of the record company on the various vinyl LP prints varies in colour, ranging from silver to blue, green, white and red. While promoting the album, stories of the bands chaotic shows that they were playing in old church halls became well known to locals. Because of this, the band was granted an opportunity to play a show at a sports hall called Maecke Blyde in Poperinge, Belgium. Lant, wanting to get away from the UK to see what the response would be to the band from fans who knew nothing of them, jumped at the chance. The concert took place on 4 June 1982 and was attended by over 3,000 fans, and after a successful show in Poperinge the band now set their sights on the United States. ==Reception and legacy==

The album has received varied critical responses both at the time of its release and since. British journalist Geoff Barton stated in his 1981 five-star review of Welcome to Hell that the album had "the hi-fi dynamics of a 50-year-old pizza", and that it "brought a new meaning to the word 'cataclysmic. In the 2013 book Louder Than Hell, Scott Ian of Anthrax is quoted as follows regarding his memories of hearing the album for the first time: "For me and all my friends, Welcome to Hell was our first exposure to Venom, and it was a huge eye-opener. It was one of those 'holy shit' records. Like, 'Jesus Christ, listen to this, these guys are fucking insane. There were songs like 'Sons of Satan' and the title track. It was so, so evil. This was a new kind of insanity." In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked Welcome to Hell as 74th on their list of 'The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time.' The black metal band Mayhem borrowed their name from the instrumental track "Mayhem with Mercy" and covered the song "Witching Hour" on their EP Deathcrush. The German thrash metal band Sodom also reportedly named themselves in reference to the song "One Thousand Days in Sodom". In addition to covering the song, Canadian parody metal band Zimmers Hole references "In League with Satan" in the title of their album When You Were Shouting at the Devil... We Were in League with Satan. American punk rock band The Meatmen covered "In League With Satan" as the title track on their enhanced CD EP Evil In A League With Satan. In 1995, Slayer and Machine Head did a cover of the song "Witching Hour" in a live concert. ==Track listing==

• Venom – producer • Conrad "Cronos" Lant – bass, vocals • Jeffrey "Mantas" Dunn – guitars • Tony "Abaddon" Bray – drums, artwork • Keith Nichol – producer, engineer ==References==