Conrad “Cronos” Lant, who sang and played bass for the British band Venom, has died at 63. The band announced his death on Thursday. No cause of death was given.
What the band said
Venom’s statement said: “For more than four decades, Conrad’s voice, bass and vision were at the heart of VENOM.” Its list of albums began: “From the first dark rumblings of Welcome To Hell, through Black Metal, At War With Satan, Possessed and beyond, he created something that changed heavy music forever.”
His son Nathan also wrote to the fans the band’s statement calls the Legions. “I know he really appreciated you all,” he wrote. “He has laid down his soul, and his music will live on.”
Venom’s album that named a genre
Lant was born in Chelsea, London, and moved to Newcastle at seven, the Guardian reports. He joined a band called Guillotine at 16, first on guitar, then bass, and became its singer after a previous frontman left. Renamed Venom, it settled into a trio with guitarist Jeff Dunn, known as Mantas, and drummer Tony Bray, known as Abaddon. Their debut, Welcome to Hell, came out in 1981.
The second album, titled Black Metal, followed in 1982, according to Wikipedia. The Guardian says it “ended up giving a name to one of metal’s most important subgenres.” It also quotes the scene historians Michael J. Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, who wrote in Lords of Chaos that the album’s cover art and sound “carved in stone some of the essential features” of black metal.
The Guardian says Lant co-produced it. He described the making of it as “pure mayhem from start to finish,” the Guardian reports. According to the Guardian, steel plates were cut into with a chainsaw, and earth was dumped onto a makeshift coffin.
Punk speed, devil image
Venom took their cue from punk. The Guardian says they made early British heavy metal heavier by playing at a furious pace. Lant said Ozzy Osbourne “was singing about the devil” and that “I wanted to be the devil.” The Guardian describes his stage act as theatrical, with declarations about witches, Satan and the underworld.
The Guardian says Venom never reached the commercial heights of Black Sabbath or the thrash bands that followed, and reached the UK Top 75 only once. Still, it says their pace, ferocity and darkness appealed to a new generation in the 1980s, particularly thrash bands such as Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax. Anthrax’s Scott Ian said admiringly of Welcome to Hell: “It was so, so evil. This was a new kind of insanity.”
Work beyond the stage
Wikipedia says Lant brought the band his own designs for the Venom logo and its Satanic imagery in late 1979, and later created the artwork used on its record sleeves. Wikipedia’s article on the album says he designed the cover in black and white, originally done in Tipp-Ex.
A long second act
The Guardian says Venom went on hiatus in 1988. Lant released two solo albums as Cronos in the early 1990s. Venom then reformed for another seven albums, the Guardian says, through 2018’s Storm the Gates. A shorter break in the early 2000s came while he recovered from a climbing injury. He trained as a fitness instructor in the 1990s and also began parallel careers in computer engineering and graphic design, even as Venom kept touring, including festivals this summer.
According to MetalTalk, Venom released their 16th studio album, Into Oblivion, in May.
The statement also said: “His music will never die.” It added: “His voice will never fade.” It thanked him: “Thank you, Conrad. Thank you, Cronos.” It ends with a farewell to him.