VENOM - "RESURRECTION"
(Steamhammer))
...You just chose the wrongest person to review VENOM... I am lunatic with this band, I can VERY hardly say that anything they release is bullshit (which is NOT!), especially now that they are as possessed as they were back then, when Hell was being consolidated in every stereo that played Welcome To Hell, Black Metal, At War With Satan etc. When I heard that VENOM were about to make a reunion, I started acting like a kid from my delight and, when the divine epos - the unnamable - the unique - the-now-classic - the denomination - colossal ... "Cast In Stone" and I heard it, I acted like a kid that his grandpa was taking to the Jumbo stores to buy him the new Transformers series, while, in '97, a child-dream was fulfilled. I SAW V-E-N-O-M _L-I-V-E !!! AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!¿?!* You can't imagine how many punches I handed out in this... eer, is this the story of my life with VENOM or will I now write a review!!!? So, back to our main subject: The new -agonizingly- awaited VENOM album, entitled "Resurrection" is released. The title says wverything, the pandemonium has begun, Noe's cataclysm, the judgement day from the incarnated demon CRONOS and his company has cometh! 14 tracks of intense feelings of Hell braking loose - internal outbreak - storm - insaneness have come to claim the place of "Cast In Stone". If I put these albums next to each other, I would say that Cast In Stone is kinda better as far as song composition and production are concerned, in which, I believe, they have achieved the best production for a VENOM album. This way they must always sound. But Resurrection has moments that will write History (classically!) like the self-titled that puts you right in the story withought any blah-blah and without a breath falls on you the blasting hammering of the arcons of Hell, "VENGEANCE", and, as your jaws have fallen on the floor, you go mad with songs like "Loaded" (classic), the epos-song with the divine riff "Firelight" that takes you for the Inquisition and continues hammering you with the drums of war in songs like "Control Freak". And after that, the pain continues with PAIN that makes you want to brake everything down. And after all these, they mature with "Disbeliever". The rest of the songs, listen to them by yourselves. Venom will amaze you with their ideas and the atomic bomb that is called production of the album, which is heavy-magisterial and differs like always, I just would say that in comparison with CAST IN STONE, RESURRECTION's production is as harsch as always (you will discover this at once), but simply more well-looked-after. I wish, though, that it will remain this way, because very well-looked-after things are not suitable for VENOM. The lyrics are -like always- "IN YOUR FACE". So much, that many people say that they do not have lyrics at all. Just because I am a VENOMANIAC and I have really "researched" on this, I have understood that they say everything so much "in bulk" sometimes that you don't even understand what they say. Every VENOM album is a single story - a chapter fadeless towards time... RESURRECTION as well !!!

The feelings I have when I'm listening to VENOM in general, can't be described. Don't think that RESURRECTION is something relaxing and loose or that, "that's it! They released Cast In Stone and it's over - everything else sucks!". Because when VENOM say "RESURRECTION" they mean "PURE FUCKIN' MAYHEM"... I know that I am writing a lot just like they have released any BLACK METAL or WELCOME TO HELL. But when we say VENOM we mean a lot of things and not just one. Just think that if it wasn't them, the word BLACK METAL wouldn't exist today. Something I have noticed in the new album is that all songs are from the same scale as in Iced Earth's "DARK SAGA". Something that made me really sad is that ABBADON has abandoned VENOM even before they write the album and, that's why there is someone who plays in the album and looks like him. The drums are heavy enough but it's different with ABBADON, no matter what.

This thing motivated my curiosity and it was really strange for me, especially after such a killer album, one the CRONOS-MANTAS-ABBADON trio to leave... Some people said that these guys do what they do for the money. Even if that was a reason, I could AT LEAST say that if it was this way, they wouldn't play like this but they would do other things. They can still have money as an important section in their lives, which I wish they won't blur their vision, even though, whatever they have said, they did it. They said they would release good albums and not just 1 album and then shit... Let's see what they will say in the magazines!

SATANAS RESURRECTION!
PURE FUCKIN' MAYHEM.

PS: I cannot give a grade to a group with such a discography. What can I possibly give them? Rate it yourselves! I gave you my own opinion and placed the album somewhere! You do that as well.

Babis "The Metal Warrior" Antaloudakis