In 1982 three young men from Tyneside, playing in a band most critics dismissed, released an album called Black Metal. It was crude, loud and deliberately shocking, and within a decade its title had become the name of a whole genre. The singer and bassist on that record, Conrad Lant, known as Cronos, has died at 63. Venom announced his death on October 1, 2026, calling him uncompromising, fearless and unmistakable. No cause of death was given.
Newcastle and the birth of Venom
Lant was born in 1963 and moved to Newcastle as a child. At the end of the 1970s he joined the band that became Venom, with the guitarist Jeffrey “Mantas” Dunn and the drummer Anthony “Abaddon” Bray. While other bands of the new wave of British heavy metal were polishing their sound, Venom went the other way. Their debut, Welcome to Hell, in 1981, was fast, distorted and full of satanic imagery that the band admitted was mostly theatre. Black Metal followed a year later.
An influence bigger than the band
Venom never had big hits, but their influence was enormous. Metallica opened for them early in their career, and Slayer, Bathory and Celtic Frost all cited them. In the early 1990s the Norwegian bands who built the second wave of black metal took the name of their music from Venom’s album. Lant’s growled vocals and distorted bass became a template for extreme metal singers around the world. He told interviewers that he simply wanted to be part of the story of rock and roll, and that he wanted people in the future to think the band was crazy.
Leaving and coming back
Lant left Venom in the late 1980s and recorded under the name Cronos before returning to the band in the mid-1990s. His former bandmates Mantas and Abaddon went on to tour as Venom Inc. from 2015, so for some years two bands carried the name. Lant kept the original Venom going for three decades with changing line-ups, and played on twelve Venom albums in all, the last of them, Into Oblivion, released in 2026. His son Nathan thanked fans for their messages after his death.
Venom’s statement did not say whether the band will continue. For many of its fans, there was never really a Venom without Cronos.