Conrad "Cronos" Lant, longtime singer and bassist for the pioneering English underground metal band Venom, has passed away. The band announced Lant's passing in a social media post today. No cause of death has been reported. Lant was 63.
Venom were probably the most extreme of the bands grouped together under the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal logo. They got downright silly with their Satanism, but their reverb-drenched thrash was fast and hard enough to sell it. They never sold a ton of records, at least compared to peers like Iron Maiden, but their music left a deep impression on many later generations of underground metal bands.
Venom's sophomore album, 1982's Black Metal, didn't sound anything like the genre that black metal has become, but the genre indisputably got its name from that record. Death metal might've taken longer to develop without their influence, too. When they toured the US, bands like Metallica and Slayer opened for them. Cronos was the band's frontman and their longest-tenured member by far. He also designed their instantly recognizable logo and did a lot of their cover art, which were honestly just as important as the music to the band's whole presentation.
Conrad Thomas Lant grew up in the English city of Newcastle Upon Tyne and played in a few local bands as a teenager. In 1979, he got together with members of the local group Guillotine to form a new band called Venom. Lant adapted the Cronos alter-ego, and the band developed a fast, guttural style that made great theatrical use of Satanic imagery. Their first single "In League With Satan" came out in 1981, and their pentagram-adorned full-length debut came out later that year.
Venom went through a bunch of membership changes and released five albums before Lant temporarily left the band in the late '80s. He started a new group called Cronos and they released a couple of '90s albums. In 1995, Land rejoined Venom as the band's classic lineup reunited. The other original members left soon afterward, but the band kept going from then on, touring and releasing more and more records, with Lant as their only consistent member. Into Oblivion, their most recent album, came out earlier this year. Check out some of Venom's work below.
