British black metal pioneers VENOM have decided to re-record some of the already completed tracks for their upcoming album and push back the CD’s projected release date to early 2008. Drummer Antony “Antton” Lant (brother of VENOM frontman Conrad “Cronos” Lant) explains: “During the Scandinavian tour [which took place in May 2007] we played through some of the new tracks in the soundchecks. There’s something about the energy you deliver when playing on a stage that differs greatly from recording in a studio. All fired up, we tore the tracks to shreds. We tried to organize a mobile studio to get to the next shows, but it was way too late notice, so on our return to the U.K. Cronos hired some small venues for us to record some new backing tracks to work on. At the end of the day it’s all about recording a great album, and this new album is sounding absolutely awesome.”

Read the rest of the article here (Venom Push Back Record)

Image Source: http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/sunra/315/venom96pic.jpg

Post from: Metal Martyr

Writing songs these days isn’t easy because after all what is there to write that hasn’t already been written about. If you lived a good life and you don’t want to be a poser you don’t write songs about how hard your life was growing up. If you’re not into politics then you’re not going to write songs about the government and how to “stick it to the man”! What else is there left to write about then either God or Satan. Christian metal isn’t exactly flying off the record store shelves and the days of Stryper are long gone. So who do we turn to? That good ole chap that never turns his back on metal, that’s right, Beelzebub!

We can’t exactly deny one of the core foundations of heavy metal and its what drives the media to point fingers every time some schizoid doesn’t take his meds and slaughters his best friend and then takes his own life. It’s the music! That’s what they say, but we know the truth is bad parenting but who’s going to listen to “long haired devil worshipper” anyway? That’s how heavy metal will always be looked at from the outside.

So, back to the question…Why does evil and metal go hand in hand? Because it does! Are we all going to hell for listening to metal? I guess we’ll find out in the end~

In case you missed Devil Music Part 1.

Original Picture source
Edited by SW

Post from: Metal Martyr

As we all know when you ask the average person off the street what the first thing they think of when you say the words “Heavy Metal”, they will tell you “Devil Music”. That’s what we expect from the ignorant, but ignorant or not it is what a lot of heavy metal has been based around for a long time.

This didn’t all start with heavy metal contrary to what everyone wants to believe. The devil in music dates far back to the early days of the blues when Robert Johnson a famous short-lived blues musician was rumored to have met the devil at the “crossroads” and sold his soul in return to be a great guitar master.

Hardcore Christian folk would label pretty much anything that wasn’t a hymnal the devils music, pretty much because most music being fun, loud and fast would sooner or later lead to sin of some sort. This is a fact we can’t deny. Oh well, life goes on. Anyway, moving up a few decades…enter Black Sabbath. As we all know, in the late 60’s Black Sabbath was born and pioneered the sound of things to come with dark horror like rock and roll which would soon be coined as heavy metal. They played heavy distorted evil sounding guitar and sang evil things. Oh and had a cool name that was tied darkness to a holy day. Among many other evil doings in rock and roll, it was rumored that the members of Led Zeppelin made a pact with Satan and the fact that Jimmy Paige was intrigued by and studied the work of Aleister Crowley didn’t help the rumor fizzle out any. The Devil was showing his face in hard rock music.

To be continued…

*Picture obtained from Mutantsandmasterminds.com.

Post from: Metal Martyr