Richard HolmesVenom Inc. are heading home for a very special Newcastle show next month. And frontman Tony ‘Demolition Man’ Dolan can’t wait to get back to his roots.
Get the Scotch in, he tells Rich Holmes…
“It’s about fucking time”.
OK, we’re paraphrasing here.
But when Venom Inc. announced they would be headlining Newcastle’s Byker Grave Festival on December 7, the feeling was that it was long overdue.
Social channels ignited.
North East England’s metal community salivated.
A hometown show, finally.
The band, originally formed from Venom’s Prime Evil line-up of Tony ‘Demolition Man’ Dolan, guitarist Jeff ‘Mantas’ Dunn and drummer Tony ‘Abaddon’ Bray, now have nine years and two studio albums, under their belts.
Yet despite blazing across the globe, they’ve never made it back to Tyneside, where Venom’s legacy was born.
Neither, for that matter, have the Cronos-fronted Venom, in its current incarnation.
So why the wait?
And why now?
Dolan admits that the “whole mess” of the Venom Inc./Venom scenario, with original members split over two bands, was a factor in delaying a Newcastle show.
In the end, it took some persistence from Byker Grave promoter Stu Bartlett to finally make it happen.
Dolan had already answered Bartlett’s call once before. The bassist fronted Tyneside metallers Atomkraft back in the early 80s, and in 2014, he was persuaded to pull a line-up together for a one-off performance of the band’s Future Warriors debut, joining the likes of Blitzkrieg and Jaguar at NWOBHM celebration Brofest.
“This is basically for Stuart,” says Dolan of the Byker Grave show. “He has been hounding me for so long. I just couldn’t let him down anymore. I love the guy, he has been really patient. He has tried everything!
“With being in Newcastle, I get to see friends, all my buddies are coming down. Everybody’s so excited. People are flying in for the show. What a buzz!”
Dolan also suggests that any hometown show had to be “uber special”. Byker Grave, Newcastle’s annual extreme metal fest, gives Venom Inc. just that platform. They’ll be topping a bill that includes Eyehategod, Goatwhore and Discharge. It’s the event’s most ambitious line-up to date.
“I’m so excited – it’s a great line-up,” exclaims Dolan – ever the metal fan. “We toured with Goatwhore in the US, they are a brilliant band. Sammy (Duet) on guitars is a genius.
“Eyehategod? I mean, there’s just nothing to say. In fact, someone wrote, ‘why are Eyehategod not headlining?’. And I was like, ‘fair enough!’.”
Venom Inc. are much changed since the Prime Evil line-up reunited. In 2018, Abaddon was replaced with Jeramie Kling, who recorded 2022’s There’s Only Black with Dolan and Dunn: the drum stool is now occupied by Newcastle-born Marc ‘JXN’ Jackson, who also plays with Brit thrashers Acid Reign.
And this year, following a second heart attack, Mantas stepped back from live shows, with 72 Legions/Shatter Messiah guitarist Curran ‘Beleth’ Murphy joining as a live member.
It has been a “really rough” year for Dunn, according to Dolan.
“We had a festival in Belgium booked for halfway through this year and he was doing prep and feeling good,” says the frontman from his London home. “And then he had another heart attack.
“The first one was a shock to him (Mantas underwent double bypass surgery in 2018). He started to panic a little bit and worry about, ‘oh my god, what if I’m getting on a plane to go to Japan and that happens’. But I think he turned it around, and although he was still trying to deal with it, he was getting there and starting to feel more positive. But then the second one (which occurred in April) has taken its toll, I think. He’s very aware that you can stop breathing quite easily.
“We’ve kept on doing the shows, and I’ve just said to him, ‘Listen, the engine is running and the bus is moving, it’s just whenever you feel you’re ready’.
“He’s just got to take his time. I don’t want to pressure him.”
Will he be ready for Byker Grave Festival?
“This is an amazing show we’re doing for Byker Grave and to have him walk on stage and start playing Welcome to Hell… well, even my hairs are standing up on end!” Dolan replies. “I don’t want anybody to think it’s not going to happen, but we can’t make it happen. We have to allow him the time and see how he is.”
Whatever happens on the night, he affirms, “the show will be fucking killer”, describing his bandmates as “on fire” during this summer’s tour of South America with Possessed.
“The first show in Chile we walked on in front of 5000 people and we started, and they lost their minds, and it never stopped for an hour. And I thought, ‘Okay, well, it’s the first show’. We went to Bolivia, same again. We went to Columbia, same again. We went to São Paulo. Even better. So I know we’re delivering.”
Dolan recorded 1989’s Prime Evil, ‘91’s Temples of Ice and ‘92’s The Wastelands with Venom following Cronos’s departure in 1987. However, he was simply a fan (albeit one who grew up in the same scene) when classics like Welcome To Hell and Black Metal were first released.
And although Venom Inc. have material from There’s Only Black and its predecessor, Avé, in their armoury, he ‘gets’ what fans want. Dolan understands why people want to hear that songs that made Venom, for a time, the world’s most extreme band.
“Jeff and I have proved ourselves with M-pire Of Evil and then Venom Inc. over the last decade and I want to play the new songs, and of course the label want us to play the new songs.
“But every time we go out, people are saying ‘can you play Dead of the Night, can you play Die Hard?’. As soon as I play a song like Welcome to Hell, Black Metal or Witching Hour, everybody wants to hear it.”
Dolan continues: “It’s about the music. You know, when you first write a song, it’s your song, and you play it with your band and you perform it in shows. But after 40 years, it’s kind of not your song anymore, because someone in the audience grew up with that song and it has more meaning for them than you’ll ever realise.
“To you, it’s just a cool song. You like the lyrics, you like the speed, you like the tempo, you like the riffs. But to someone else, it has a totally different meaning. It saved them when they were at their lowest point. So they want to hear that song.
“You get the dialogue of ‘you shouldn’t be playing those songs, you should be doing something else, you weren’t on that album’, and then there’s a fan going, please, please, please play Don’t Burn The Witch. What am I going to say? Fuck off?. If we can do it, why shouldn’t we do it?”
Does it surprise him that a younger generation of metalheads are discovering Venom’s music? That 19-year-old Eddie Munson lookalikes sport Black Metal patches on their battle jackets? Hell, that even Byker Grave Festival’s pre-show is headlined by a band called Venomwolf?
“If the music moves you, it fucking moves you and it doesn’t matter at what point you join the party,” he replies with trademark enthusiasm. “If you got there on the first album and you were there for the first single release, like me, brilliant. If you were there for Prime Evil, or From The Very Depths, or Avé, or Storm the Gates, brilliant. It doesn’t matter when you find it, just find it.
“And actually, when you find it later, it’s kind of exciting, because you haven’t taken that whole journey yet, but you can start digging into it and that’s like finding treasure.”
He continues: “Everything is cyclical. In the last 20 to 30 years, people have rediscovered all this great music and there are young kids coming to shows. There were 19 and 20-year-olds coming to our LA show, all with vinyl, going, ‘fucking hell, I wish I was there’. They want to rediscover it. They want a piece of it and they feel, in a way, that they missed something. And there I am from Newcastle and Jeff’s from Newcastle, standing talking to them with our Geordie accents.”
The generation gap? It’s irrelevant for Dolan…
“We might be old but we’re going to get up on that stage and you’re going to get your arse kicked. You’re going to feel it’s real.
“Is it extreme now, compared to what’s extreme now? No. But it’s how you approach it. It doesn’t have to be extreme if the show’s energy is up and the power is right there in their faces.
“You won’t get the same feeling going to see Pantera with Metallica in an arena of 40,000 people, and you’re sitting up in the rafters. I mean, it’s great and you can see the screens but you’re not going to get the same thing as if you’re in The Marquee Club with 250 people, and it’s all kicking off, you just can’t get that atmosphere. That’s what we enjoyed. That’s what we had and that’s what the kids want.
“The last time we played The Whiskey a Go Go and The Roxy on Sunset Strip, they were rammed. The sweat was pouring down the walls. Now that’s like what it used to be at CBGBs in New York or The Marquee. It was exactly that kind of atmosphere that we went into, you’d come out of there absolutely fucked and drenched in sweat, and covered in bruises the next day, but very, very happy. And that’s what the kids want. And I love that we still can do that for them.”
Do fans across the world understand Newcastle’s significance in metal’s evolution? Are they aware of Tyneside’s role in spawning Raven, Satan, Tygers Of Pan Tang et al… bands who influenced the likes of Metallica, Sodom and Sepultura?
“Venom is synonymous with Newcastle and it’s like we’re bringing Newcastle to them,” says Dolan. “Fans will ask you about albums and tours and funny things, and it always comes back to Newcastle, and what was it like. There is a mystique about it, a legendary status.
“The first half of the run we did in America was us and Satan. They are some of my favourite friends, and I love them, and to have them there it was like, Geordie boys have hit the town.
“There were a lots of bands coming out of Britain (in the 80s). You had Sheffield of course. But, you know, there was just something different about Newcastle.
“We fly that flag proudly when we go, we’re not ashamed of where we come from. That’s who we are. We’re Geordies, we’re mental and even if my accent doesn’t sound the same as it did, well, give me ten minutes and a pint of Scotch…”
Venom Inc. play Byker Grave Festival at Newcastle University on December 7 with Eyehategod, Goatwhore, Discharge, Arð, Margarita Witch Cult, Druidess and Goblinsmoker. Tickets are available here.
Byker Grave Festival’s pre-show takes place on December 6 at The Lubber Fiend. Headliners Venomwolf are joined by Grave Altar, Bone Tomb and Dead Monarchs. Tickets here.
Band photo: Fernando Serani.