Venom – Welcome To Hell

Growing up being into rock and metal in a small village, there was a thing called Sounds which was like the precursor to Kerrang! every week. I saw a picture of this band called Venom with inverted crosses and I was like, ‘Wow, this looks pretty interesting’. There was no internet back then, so I went to my local record shop and walked in and there it was for £3.99, I picked it up and thought, ‘Pentagram on the back and the front. This has got to be good’. I took it back, and my dad was on night shifts so he was sleeping through the day, so I thought, ‘Don’t wake him up or he’ll be in a mood!’.

I put my headphones on and then ‘Sons Of Satan’ comes blasting out and I think, ‘My god, this is it!’ My life had changed in the blink of an eye. I was always searching for that next step in extremity, especially back then. They just looked the part, and I loved it, they instantly became one of my favourite bands at that point. I mean, it’s not the best produced record, but I think it’s just classically over the top and in some ways – well, a lot of ways – it was a stepping stone to get into punk, Discharge, The Exploited, GBH and stuff like that, because for me it seemed almost the same.