Conrad Lant, the frontman for hugely influential metal band Venom, has died aged 63.
Known to fans by his stage name of Cronos, he passed away on 1 October.
Lant was born in London on 15 January 1963 and raised in Newcastle from the age of eight. He was just 16 when joined Venom in 1979 as a guitarist but quickly switched to bass and vocals.
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Alongside Lant in Venom’s classic line-up were guitarist Jeff Dunn and drummer Tony Bray. Inspired by Black Sabbath and Motörhead, the trio’s mission was to create the heaviest and scariest music ever heard.
To match the darkness in their Satanic songs, the three musicians chose aliases inspired by astrology and ancient mythology. Lant became Cronos, Dunn was Mantas and Bray was Abaddon, the latter two names drawn from Anton Szandor LaVey’s occult bestseller, The Satanic Bible.
In the early ’80s, Venom rose out of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal to define a new form of extreme music immortalised in the title of their second album from 1982: Black Metal.
Lant left Venom in 1986 but rejoined in 1995. He continued to lead the band without Dunn and Bray, and in 2026 the album Into Oblivion was released – his final act with Venom.
In a major interview with Metal Hammer in 2022, Lant looked back on his life and career.
He described his initiation into the world of heavy music.
“In the late ’60s, early ’70s, it was Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath,” he said. “Those early Sabbath albums really did something to me. But really, Status Quo was the first band where I thought, ‘I can properly relate to this.’ I loved all the denim and the hair and the way they played – heads down! When I was 11, Quo did six nights at Newcastle City Hall and I saw every show.”
Once he became frontman for Venom, his intention was to outdo Ozzy Osbourne.
“I always wanted to carry the Ozzy thing to the nth degree,” he said. “I was always reading up on Satanism and demonology and witchcraft. I loved Sabbath, but I realised that they’d only touched the tip of the iceberg. This could go so far. Ozzy was singing about being chased by the Devil. I thought: ‘I’ll be the Devil!’
“In my lyrics I was basically taking the God squad position and saying, ‘OK, let’s say it’s true. Satan is on his throne and he’s burning souls and he’s gonna come and get you and stick a hot spike up your arse!’ So let’s really push that – because it sounds fucking amazing!”
One of the biggest influences on Venom’s music was Motörhead, and as Lant proudly stated: “We were able to grab the Motörhead audience. We grabbed the punks and the metalheads. I was 14 when punk came along, and that was another lightbulb going off in my head. I thought, ‘If I take the rock image and the punk attitude, then you have a metal band who don’t give a shit.’”
When Venom’s debut album, Welcome To Hell, was released in 1981, Sounds writer Geoff Barton hailed it as “possibly the heaviest record ever allowed in the shops for public consumption”.
Lant said of that influential review: “It was brilliant, and just what I needed at that time, a real confirmation of what I was doing. Geoff Barton was very helpful at the beginning of our career, because nobody else was giving us a fucking inch. When we made our first demos, I sent them off to every record company and I got a letter back from EMI where all it said was: ‘FUCK OFF!’”
In 1982 came Black Metal, which turned out to be one of the most influential metal albums of all time.
Lant recalled: “We made Welcome To Hell in three days. Black Metal was six days of recording, one day mixing. When we did the song Black Metal, I said, ‘Just for laugh, let’s play it as a fast as we fucking can’ – and that was the version that made the album.”
Venom had a huge influence on thrash metal, and in the mid-’80s they had Metallica and Slayer as opening acts on tour.
“I hoped they’d be big,” Lant said, “because they were good bands, friends at the time, and it was fun on the road. But I never would have thought that Metallica would have had the success that they’ve had. They’ve had some shit albums – they’d have to admit that. But the first three albums, fucking great.”
In the ’80s, Lant embraced the rock ’n ‘roll lifestyle with gusto.
“I wanted to live that life,” he said. “I wanted to do that whole rock ’n’ roll thing. How can you be a real rock star if you don’t do it all?”
In a strange twist, it was during Venom’s hiatus in the early ’90s that the Norwegian black metal scene rose to prominence, with bands such as Mayhem, Emperor and Burzum citing Venom as their inspiration. In 1987, Mayhem had recorded a version of the Venom classic Witching Hour.
Venom got back together in 1995, although this reunion ended quickly and acrimoniously.
As Lant remembered it: “I contacted the other two guys and said, ‘Shall we have another shot at this and do it properly?’ So we did the live album, The Second Coming [1996], and a new album, Cast In Stone [1997], but to me it still wasn’t Venom. We hadn’t found that thing that we’d lost. Welcome To Hell and Black Metal are part of that era, and there it shall stay.”
Lant said he enjoyed Norwegian black metal on a purely musical level: “It was so dark and so evil. It was the next generation. But it also created what I call the ‘black metal police’ – all these people going, ‘This band is black metal! This band isn’t!’ And I love this one: ‘Venom aren’t black metal!’ Ha ha! I just wish they’d come up with their own term, like Norse metal. That’s what I say to these guys: ‘You’ve stolen my term, but you’re not really black metal, because black metal is power metal, speed metal, thrash metal, death metal – all the metals together!”
What Lant despised about the early Norwegian black metal scene was its culture of violence, criminality, racism, homophobia and neo-fascism.
“It was disgusting,” he said. “People like that, I want to sit them down in front of TV and play the entire The World At War [26-episode WWII documentary] series. Watch that and tell me fascism is a good idea, you fucking idiots!”
Venom’s first ever UK concert, at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on 1 June 1984, is remembered as one of the greatest and most over-the-top heavy metal shows of all time.
When it came to assessing his career and Venom’s place in the history of heavy metal, Lant said proudly: “I think we were a catalyst. Metal needed a kick up the arse and we came along and gave people permission to try new stuff. I just wanted to be part of the story of rock ’n’r oll. If anything, I helped keep the music alive.”
When asked how he would want to be remembered, Conrad Lant replied with a smile: “As somebody who took chances as an artist and a musician. Somebody who broke the fucking mould. I want people in the future to think, ‘That band Venom was crazy! And look at the influence on all the stuff that came after them.’ That’s where I see my place, as part of the whole big picture.”
