And so my second encounter with almighty Gods of All things Black became a fact. This time however no internal media were used, as (courtesy of Brutal Assault press unit) I had an undeniable pleasure to face the Beast in person. Having an opportunity to interrogate the whole band this time I felt that this one may well serve as the completion of the lengthy interview with Cronos we did back in OMM #2. Alas, ladies and gentlemen, once more the creature is summoned to deliver the declaration of war…

OLDSCHOOL METAL MANIAC

AT WAR WITH VENOM!

Hell-o gentlemen. What’s up? How do you like the festival so far? I know that your performance is set rather for the evening, but how do you like the idea of the festival in an army fortress?

Cronos: Great! It’s an unusual setting, so get ready for an unusual gig!
Rage: Yeah! And this dungeon-like feeling… I mean the Metal fests are usually set in the fields, but this is just aweseome! It gives you ambience
Dante:Heh, and the sight is pretty massive around here.

And the town itself is also beautiful, take it from me, I come here for like 8 years now. Anyways, you are between promoting your latest opus and releasing a new one. Let us start with “Fallen Angels”. In my (and not exclusivealy mine” opinion it is your best output since quite a while and the press tends to agree with me. How do you feel, was the response satisfactory for you? And after the time that passed are you still happy with the album, or is there something you would change?

Cronos: Y’know, Venom’s always moving. Venom’s always changing and it’s Black Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, but still we like to experiment and we like being controversial. We don’t know what the fans would like, so we just stick to making what we like and the great thing about the “Fallen Angels” album is that it was written by all 3 members of the band. We came up with all the riffs, we came with the drum parts, the vocals and it was overall a band effort and now that we saw what a great response it was we want to stay on that theme, so this is exactly what the new album’s gonna be like. A sequel for the last album, “Fallen Angels pt. 2” if you want. The fans took the word straight away, we put some songs in the set and they are really happy with it.
Dante: We already played one of the new songs at the Canadian Amnesia Festival last month and it went down a storm! It was amazing, in fact we used the recording of the Legions chanting in the studio version of the song. It came a little anthem sort of. All we had to say was that this is a new song and this is what you gonna sing: “RISE!” and they immediately clicked in to the first chorus.
Cronos: That’s the Legions! Rage: Fantastic! I think they’re gonna enjoy this album.

Cronos mentioned “Fallen Angels” was a band effort. Since the Venom’s lineup seems to be stable for a while now despite all the storms in the past, I got a question to Dante, how do you like being in Venom so far and how was it different from what you did for Tony Martin’s solo band?

Cronos: Faster! Let’s put it that way (laughs)
Dante: Yeah, it’s like going to the fucking gym when you come off stage, but it’s great. These two guys are fantastic to work with and we’re really good team together. Not only the band members, also the crew, we’re really good unit. Musically, yes, it’s different it’s a lot faster, but it’s great. I love the intensity of the songs and the speed the fans are absolutely fucking crazy. They really love this band and everywhere we go there are superb reactions and once you’re off tour you go home with a big smile on your face and you can’t wait for the next.

Great to hear that, especially after the recent events. As we all know previously behind the thunder machine there was Cronos’brother Antton…

Cronos: He’s not my real brother. He just says that ‘cause he got the same name.

I see… And there were some nasty and bitter words from his side recently. Care to comment?

Cronos: He is a nu-metal drummer, he’s not Venom. He was a stand-in drummer. We just got him in because we knew him as he’s from Newcastle. But he plays like nu-metal kind of stuff, kind of slipknot shit, so he stood in for Venom for a short while, but he is not really a Venom Black Metal drummer and he was never fully in the band, so when the opportunity came I said “you just go and do your own thing an we’ll just get someone who will be happy in the band” and it always get bad in that point and we got Dante
Dante: But we’re not bitter.
Cronos: Yeah, I know you’re not. He came, he played his drums, he left, goodbye. We just move on.
Dante: On the “Fallen Angels” album he didn’t do anything, so it was just me. We just moved on, carried on doing what we did and ultimately it came bout better for everyone I think.
Cronos: He’s happy doing what he’s doing right now, we’re happy with what we’re doing.
Dante: This happens in Rock’n’Roll…
Cronos: It would be shit and boring if there was no bitterness. You can’t always expect you’ll get along fine with everybody, you know what I mean? It’s the same as with the guitarist he had for the “Metal Black” album, Mykvs. I done some stuff with him on my solo album and for Venom he came as a stand-in to help me out get it on the feet again, to get Venom back together, cause I dodn’t want it to die. He lasted as long as he needed until I was unable to move on and Rage was sort of at hand and he does great fucking Black Metal, so the Americans can go back home and leave Black Metal to the British! (laughs)

Haha! Alright. This year marks the 4^th since Venom assaulted Poland for the first and only time and, as a proud member of Polish Legions I have to ask: when for fuck’s sake the next time?

Cronos: (laughs) The next time there’s a gig offer! I mean really, this is what I always tell to the fans: go to the promoters. You guys are going to all these festivals and gigs in Poland, so express to the promoters “we want Venom” and then if there’s a contact we will return, but you guys gotta shout it out loud. Tell the promoters what you want. These are your festivals. Promoters are there just to make money. They call themselves Metal fans, but they’re just the fucking businessmen. Tell them what you want. They will listen because they want you to buy the ticket. And once you tell them we’ll get the dodge. We’ll go wherever the fans want us to come, but we need a promoter to say “hey, I got a gig here for next month, I want Venom to be there”.

That’s pretty clear.

Cronos: And Poland’s had a lot of problems over the last few years though. We had more than one gig set up when we were there back in a day and one had to be canceled because there was a flood there… Anyways just go to the guys who do the festivals and the bigger festival the better because then we can put the show on.

By the way when you played that gig in Poland you were a bit lacking on the pyro, can we expect that tonight?

Cronos: Haaa! It’s always gonna be what you wait for… We never like to say. We always want to put on as big show as possible, so yeah, there will be some hellfire tonight…

And on 20^th of April you were meant to play on Kabuto Festival in Japan, however ths one got unfortunately canceled as well as the Legacy Open Air appearance in Germany. What was the reason for this? Any health problems after the feral rock climbing accident?

Cronos: No! It was just that the festival went bust. All the gigs we hat at the beginning of the year went down for the promoter. The only health problem I had was when I got sick before doing the Metal All-Stars thing, but no Venom shows were cancelled due to my health, it was all the promoters.
Rage: It’s a very turbulent time, this year and the last one. We just had a festival that was just starting in the Brit and we’ve been pulled, putting up Marilyn Manson and Cradle of Filth instead.
Cronos: The promoters are putting too many of the same bands year after year, the fucking American bands taking over all the festivals. Back in a day there was more variety and there was more reason to go around the festivals and now? What’s the point of watching over and over the same band? Same fucking boring American bands. The promoters need a slap. Send the Americans off.

Haha, point taken.Now something kinda itchy. There was an official statement coming from Mantas earlier this year in which he said that he has no interest in putting the original Venom lineup together again, being happy with what he does in M-Pire of Evil….

Cronos: No! No! Fuck off! He left the band! He fucked off in 1985! He’s the most un-Black Metal person I’ve ever met in my life. The guy had a nervous breakdown, he’s a fucking girl. Fuck off! I don’t even know why I’m in that statement. What, he thinks I’m going to throw this guy or this guy (pointing Rage and Dante – annt. T.)out? No fucking way! This is my band. Fuck him. Print it! (laughs)

Well… I will,haha. I see you ain’t going any softer on that…

Cronos: He doesn’t even look like Mantas anymore. I don’t get what he’s doing. He says he doesn’t want to do any more Venom, then all he does is Venom songs.Go play fucking brutal industrial, whatever you call that shit, but I don’t get it. He’s been kicked out of like 20 bands in just 6 months. They all just failed, you know? I got no sympathy for the guy. He hasn’t got a clue.He had nothing to do with Venom when he was actually in Venom. He just wrote a couple of songs, that’s it. I don’t want to have anything in common with those people, him and our first drummer. Nothing! I don’t want any fucking politics, I want Black Metal. I want people interested in making good music and putting a fucking good show. None of the politics, none of the bullshit. I want no argument, I want to create great music for the fans. Th fans don’t want to hear problems. They don’t want to hear bullshit. They want to hear great songs and see the great show, so I don’t see why should we look back at yesterday when we’re looking towards tomorrow.

Well put… Alright. You are credited as the originators of Black Metal and seeing the whole evolution of the genre, may I ask if you’re up to date with what’s what the people consider Black Metal nowadays, as it evolved? What do you think of it?

Cronos: I know what you mean. This so-called second wave. That’s Norse Metal or Corpsepaint Metal, call it Norwegian Metal, call it whatever. It’s not Black Metal. It’s the second wave of Black Metal. It’s not the original Black Metal. Black Metal is Speed Metal, Power Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, all of it is what Black Metal encompasses. The guys who deem themselves as such nowadays play Death Metal or Corpsepaint Metal, but it’s definitely not Black Metal. And I think there are some great bands among them, I like DimmuBorgir for example (Yeeeuuuugh…-annt. T.), but I don’t see the reason why they don’t come up with a name for their own music, Norse Metal or Corpse Metal or something because they took it to another degree which is what one should do. It should evolve.

Take it from Cronos! And do you keep in friendly terms with the members of the bands that were deemed “Black Metal” along with you, like Mercyful Fate’s King Diamond or Celtic Frost’s Tom Warrior?

Cronos: Well… They were never considered Black Metal really.

I mean, the fans dubbed them so. Just saying form the fan’s perspective…

Rage: This is how you put things in the boxes… I mean, Celtic Frost are amazing, King Diamond is amazing, I love ‘em, but I won’t dare calling them Black Metal. They are the boxes the fans made up to put the music into. But at the end of the day the only real division is between great music and shit I don’t want to hear. And this is how I want my music. No boxes.

I see. Alright gentlemen, so that would be it. Thank you for your time and patience. The last wordsbelong to you.

Cronos: Hell yeah! All things should be Metal! Kill pop music!
Rage: Argh!
Dante: Thank you!!!

Count Cronos, Dante the Infernal Strider and La Rage vs. OMM Live DeathReport Force

Interview  byTymoteusz Jędrzejczyk

foto  Live by Leszek Wojnicz-Sianożęcki

foto  Venom & Tymon action  by Mateusz Kluba