Venom Frontman Conrad 'Cronos' Lant Dies at 63

Conrad "Cronos" Lant, bassist and lead singer of Venom, has died at 63. His bandmates announced the death Thursday on social media. No cause of death was provided.

"It is with profound sadness and broken hearts that we share the news that Conrad 'Cronos' Lant has passed away. For more than four decades, Conrad's voice, bass and vision were at the heart of Venom," the band wrote.

The statement continued: "From the first dark rumblings of Welcome to Hell, through Black Metal, At War With Satan, Possessed and beyond, he created something that changed heavy music forever. VENOM never followed the rules. They forged their own path. And Conrad was there at the centre of it all — uncompromising, fearless and unmistakable."

Lant's son Nathan confirmed the loss in his own statement. "I want to thank all of the Legions for all of the support you have given my dad over the years," he wrote. "I know he really appreciated you all. He has laid down his soul, and his music will live on. The legend of Cronos will never die. His music will never die. His voice will never fade."

Venom formed in Newcastle in 1979, at the tail end of the first wave of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal — the movement that launched Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Motörhead. Drawing on the imagery, intensity and speed of the latter two bands, the group began with Lant on rhythm guitar. He switched to bass, then took over as vocalist after Clive Archer left in 1980.

The debut album arrived in 1981. Welcome to Hell stripped heavy metal to its rawest form and went all-in on satanic imagery. "Blasphemy has been an effective attention grabber for centuries, but until 1981, heavy metal had never seen a band go as all-in on Satan as the three lads from Newcastle calling themselves Venom did," Rolling Stone wrote of the title track in its 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Songs list. The magazine noted: "Contrasting with the forward-thinking innovation of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (a.k.a. NWOBHM), the trio stripped heavy metal down to its most primitive, bluntest form… Critics were appalled, metal fans ate it up."

The follow-up sealed the band's legacy. Black Metal, released in 1982, was so influential that it named an entire subgenre. It also inspired offshoots including thrash, speed and death metal.

Venom's catalogue has been covered extensively by the bands it inspired — Obituary, Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir and Mayhem, the Norwegian group at the centre of the black metal scene. Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth have all cited Venom as an influence.

The band's reach extended beyond metal. "Venom fucking rocked," Beastie Boys' Mike D said in 1995. "They had the speeches, the routines, the metal! Venom were an early crossover band. I used to listen to this hardcore radio show in New York, and they used to mix stuff like Venom in amongst the Black Flag and Minor Threat. We thought Venom were excellent. But then they came to New York to do some gigs, and we found out that they weren't joking at all!"

Lant's onstage banter developed a life of its own. The Beastie Boys gave Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore a tape of his between-song speech from a 1986 Venom gig in Trenton, New Jersey; Moore pressed it onto a 7-inch single titled "Venom – Live." The Beastie Boys also sampled Lant's voice at the end of "Mark on the Bus," a track on their 1992-era album Check Your Head.

Venom first broke up in 1988. Lant reformed the band with various lineups and continued to perform as Venom until his death. Outside the group, he fronted his own band Cronus and collaborated with Warfare, Cradle of Filth, and Dave Grohl's metal side project Probot.

Lant leaves behind a catalogue whose influence runs from the fringes of Norwegian black metal to the Beastie Boys' sample archives — and a subgenre that still bears the name of the album he made in 1982.