Venom‘s Cronos says a falling rock hit his neck on a climb and left him unable to play bass, nearly ending his music career.
Cronos has spent nearly five decades being described as the man who invented black metal. He has also taught aerobics classes to soldiers, worked as a multimedia engineer, and grows Carolina Reapers in his garden in Northumberland.
The Venom frontman, born Conrad Lant, laid out that double life in a new interview with Metal Hammer, including an accident in the early 2000s that came close to finishing his playing career.
He had taken up climbing with military friends he met through his fitness work, heading out to Wales and Scotland. On one climb in Wales, the man above him dislodged a rock.
“The guy above us, the rock under his foot gave way,” Cronos said. “I ducked out of the way, but it hit us square in the back of me neck – boom. I was braced up for a while.”
The injury was not life-threatening, but it took his instrument away from him.
“I couldn’t play bass,” he continued. “I certainly couldn’t stand up and play bass. I felt like I was done playing music. That’s when I took up the computer.”
That turn led him into graphic design. A friend running a computer company in Newcastle challenged him after Cronos laughed at the firm’s logo, and he ended up working there as a multimedia engineer.
“A mate of mine had a computer company in Newcastle,” he added. “I was laughing at the graphics on the company logo, and he said: ‘Can you do better?’ I went: ‘Yeah.’”
“Everything’s an art medium. I could pick up some mud and create a picture on a canvas. This is the way I see creativity – nothing’s off the table. So AI comes along, and I’m like: ‘Yeah, I’ll try that.’”
He was clear that this applies to visual work only. Asked about music, his answer was short: “Nah. I’ll always write me own music.”
The fitness career came earlier, in the wake of the Jane Fonda workout boom, and he approached it with more rigour than most would expect from the man who wrote “In League With Satan“.
“I knew f**k-all about cardiovascular exercise, so I decided to go and learn how to do it properly. I went to college, got top marks for everything in all me exams,” Cronos said.
By the early 1990s he was teaching: “I did loads of classes. I played rave. We’d start off with mid-paced stuff, just to warm up, then it was bang! bang! bang!”
Military personnel joined in: “They used to come to the classes. We’d do it in sports halls or fields. They’d have their boots and backpacks on.”
He had considered leaving music altogether after quitting Venom in 1987: “I was gonna pack it all in. I was gonna be a slaughterman or work in the forestry commission. I love being outdoors.”
There is also an injury that predates all of it. As a teenager messing about with air rifles, he was shot in the eye, which ended his plan to join the army. “I’m blind in this eye,” he said, pointing to his right. “The pellet’s still in there.”
On his former bandmates, Cronos was blunt. Jeff “Mantas” Dunn and Antony “Abaddon” Bray made the first two Venom albums with him, and he has no interest in revisiting it.
“People have made up this myth about that line-up,” he said. “There was no camaraderie. We weren’t friends. When this band split, it was on bad terms.”
Regarding the relationship today, he said: “Nah. I don’t want anything to do with them two. Too much piss-fartin’ around.”
The comment carries extra weight given that Mantas and Abaddon shared a stage in Tokyo last November, performing three Venom songs together at Shinjuku Antiknock alongside Japanese musicians including Gezol of Sabbat and Mirai Kawashima of Sigh.
Cronos joined Venom at 16 and was not the original singer. That role belonged to Clive Archer, who performed in early corpse paint under the name Jesus Christ: “Jeff and Bray said: ‘We think you’re better than him.’ So we kicked him out and became a three-piece. I’ve never seen him since.”
Their intent was never subtle. “Ozzy was singing about the Devil. I wanted to be the Devil.”
Outside music, his interests run further than most would guess. He grows chillies and makes sauces for friends. “If you’re talking Carolina Reapers and Nagas and all them boys, you’ve got to get your compost right,” He was an RSPB member as a child and still watches the birds around his home. “Goldfinches, robins, wrens. We even had a heron in our back garden. I’ve always been into birds. Not just the flying ones.”
Into Oblivion, Venom‘s sixteenth studio album, came out on May 1 through Noise/BMG. It runs to thirteen tracks and is their first new material since 2018’s Storm The Gates, recorded by the lineup of Cronos, guitarist Stuart “Rage” Dixon and drummer Danny “Dante” Needham, together for seventeen years, the longest-running in the band’s history.
Venom formed in Newcastle in 1979. Their first two albums, 1981’s Welcome To Hell and 1982’s Black Metal, gave the genre both its blueprint and its name.
