Venom Inc, The Voice of Black Metal |

Venom Inc, is currently touring with Goatwhore, Toxic Holocaust and The Convalescence in support of their newly goliath release Ave Satanas via Nuclear Blast Records. We had a chance to talk with the masterminds of Venom Inc, Jeff “Mantas” Dun and Tony “The Demolition Man” Dolan about their record, the metal scene and the content of the album. The following interview has some language not suitable for kids. Enjoy this exclusive!

Rockbrary- “How is the tour going so far?”

The Demolition Man- “We are about twelve dates in, all have been great but some are outstanding and the fans have been getting bigger and bigger it has been mental. Yesterday Portland was incredible, Vancouver too , you probably go to the shows and say wow how are we going to top this one but you go to the next one and it does.”

Rockbrary- “Aves Satanas is a form of debut with the new name Venom Inc and fans have loved the song, have you seen that in the previous shows?”

Rockbrary- “When we did Blackest Of The Black, we opened with “Ave Satanas” and the fans have been singing at the show and you are surprised, the next show the same thing. We messed around with the set for a lot of logistic reasons, but also because someone takes a picture of the set list puts it out there and everyone else knows what you are going to be doing.It kind of takes away some of the surprise effect, it is nice to have an impact and have people not know what is going to happen.

It is important to give them the feeling or surprise. Everything we do is different, the venue is different and the fans are different. It all works out together, we feed off the energy from the fans and the feed off of us.”

Rockbrary- “You have been a huge influence of currents bands like Metallica, Slayer and other newer bands, what drives you to keep writing crazy music like this, in all good sense of the word crazy?”

Mantas- “Im crazy, I constantly have riffs going through my head, it was off on a european or american tour and when i returned home. I wrote 84 guitar riffs from the mobile phone, from the bus hotels and saved them.A few of those riffs made it to the new album, I constantly have riffs going through my head and I need an outlet. I said a million times i have a studio, i go in there with the objective of creating something, i am not one of those guitarist who practices is for hours, I rather create. This album recording was very creative process, it was an excess of 25 songs.”

Rockbrary- “The sound you have in this album is raw, yet cleaner and crisp…”

The Demolition Man- “It had to be in this day in age, we could not go back to 1981 and 1982 the production values have changed completely over the years, I didn’t want it to be too clean, it had to retains some warmness in it some rough edges. I think it is heavy, powerful but i think it has a lot of depth with the individual instrument. On sub-sequentially listenings to the album they are discovering new things in it. The great choruses, I think it had to have not a mega modern production, but I think personally, metal went through a period where a lot of bands started to sound the same not in the sound but in the production. I think we needed to have a rough edge in it. You can turn it up as loud as you want all you get is power, before it went to the mastering stage it was tested in so many systems to make sure it had that impact.”

Rockbrary- “The metal scene is evolving constantly, you have evolved as an artists and musicians, could this be a revelation for new venom inc and how can you top this one.”

Mantas- “Easy… wait until next one.”

The Demolition Man- “You can not plagiarize your self, you cant try and copy your self, because it is not going to be real. Like the shows, all we need to be is us playing, it is the characters that was important. The album had to represent us, I think it does. These guys, have nothing to prove, they don’t have to prove who they are, they proved that they were huge at the time. There wasn’t a whole genre, there wasn’t all these scenes. There was a bench mark, it was their own bench mark, when they did black metal it was to describe them selves against everything else, not to create a genre.

All that followed was crazy and has taken us to this place. But as individuals traveling that journey together and then separately, some folks ask is this the following album from 1992 we said no its just the next evolution of it, we didn’t plan to do a band, to tour or an album. two days into the first tour after we played lived 5 songs, we were asked to do live album. Before Christmas the management said to get demos and that lead to Nuclear Blast, it all became real but the process has been driven by fans. We did not sit dow and said will do this and do that we’ll evolve in to this. It totally driven by fans, “we want you to come here, to go here, to do this.” OK, that is basically what we’ve done, we are just creating what is done on stage. “

Rockbrary- “Seeing you live at The Vinyl, when i hear you play the classics, you definitely destroyed like many old bands…”

Demolition Man- “I think its another generation, ten years ago or so the majority of the audience would be like 40 years or what not, and they would all have their plastic badges with all their albums in, and were looking for that moment when they would come across the band. Now, like last time 60 percent of the fans are under it and younger and they are listening to it for the first time, and say, holy fuck it think that is brilliant, most bands don’t get the chance to do it again. we played Sons of Satan and it is incredible, we live our souls and selfs on stage, that is what people get from it, we don’t short change our selves, we live our selfs on stage that is what the fans are responding to.

Rockbrary- “Where do you get the lyrical content from?”

Mantas-“It comes out of my twisted life, there is a lot of common things to this album. “Blood Stained” Its about the state of the world and how people are just fucking each other over. Uh “Forged in Hell” is about a band who played live is mostly about us, Metal We Bleed is mostly about the fans. Ave Satanas is typical Venom, Black N Roll is a tribute to every hero we’ve ever had. War is another common thing; Human beings are the supposed to be the smartest in the world, I beg to differ.

Demolition Man- “Its remarkable that on one hand every country in the world is looking for solutions for cancer, while on the other hands we are throwing nuclear warheads on each other, right… what are we doing? So we are chopping peoples heads off or trying to save each other, its that kind of anomaly that makes us common to this, or reaching its observational. Like the art cover, the angel is there to guide man or protected, there is the sheep, the wolves and sheep clothing. there is an arid landscape is it the beginning or the end, he comes walking calmly playing a flute.

Mars is a red planet, in a millennial what if someone drops a drone and collect water but it really is blood.Is that what we are going to leave behind, a blood soaked planet? “

Rockbrary- “Fans are not going to censor them selves, we are opened minded that is why metal heads are so in to this music. Then you have the government censoring the artists that opened their eyes to those issues.”

Demolition Man- “Thats right, the politicians will always push their agenda to say that is bad, because they want to make sure you don’t have a voice, they want you to go passively live your life.”

Rockbrary- “The new social media, and modern technology is taking over the record sells, and musicians are being handed the shorter straw financially, what is your point of view of that?”

Demolition Man- “It is difficult because youtube delivers everything as finished items, you might get some recitals from that. Or you might not get much like spotify or streams. That is when we bring our records, to the live shows sell our march, other than that you know there are other methods. In Germany the municipalities give money for the arts, which includes music so you can go play shows, the rest of the world needs to catch up to that and see that tattooing and music is cultural as much as coffee shops but a venus is like ooohhh.”

Rockbrary- “Is Black n Roll a genre that you are trying to pioneer?”

Mantas- No i think there are too many fucking genres.

Demolition Man- “We played the Inferno fest in Sweden, someone wrote in an article, because it was all extreme bands, and they said- “they were playing rock n roll i thought they would be more dangerous. They were great but they are just like rock n roll. Well black metal rock n roll black n roll.” In fact we spend most of the times telling people forget that fucking genres, it’s metal just metal. Don’t not go to a show because its a thrash band, its your band and see a show because you like black metal and the show has deathcore. Back in the day that is what people would do all the time, if you were at a Judas Priest show and you’d see a guy wearing an ACDC shirt and don’t stand next to him because of it. Its just music, its all metal.”

Thank you for the time during your busy tour. Fans make sure you get their gear, because it is a way to support this scene.

Reported by: Hostile Jo