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Cronos > Venom > Reviews
Cronos - Venom

Odd compilation, but worth getting for 3 reasons - 76%

cronosmantas, March 2nd, 2006

This is a really odd release by Cronos to say the least. At first I thought "great another compilation" just like all those dreaded Venom compilations that plague ever record store under the " V " section. This however is not all it seems. Yes it contains a handful of "best of" tracks off of Cronos's two solo albums but it also contains a lot of Venom covers as well. For the songs they picked off of the two solo albums, they did a good job at getting good ones. The Venom covers (for which this compilation was creatively titled "Venom") are lame for the most part.

The compilation opens with the In League with Satan cover....this cover plain and simple sucks ass. It takes the kickass original and slows it down to a tremendous bore. It's like Cronos wanted to make it more atmospheric...but he failed miserably. 1000 Days in Sodom, 7 Gates of Hell, Don't Burn Witch in Nomine Satanas, and Satanachist are all cookie cutter covers with Cronos only going through the motions of covering great songs by his then old band. What I found kind of interesting is that they covered the Venom song Fire off of the album Calm Before the Storm, and album in itself that really sounds like a Cronos solo album as opposed to a Venom album. The song At War with Satan is also a Venom cover (a decent one at that) but it was not specially recorded for this compilation as it was recorded as the CD bonus track for the Dancing in the Fire Cronos album. What hurts these songs is guitarist Mike Hickey (aka Mykus) as he just can't compare to Mantas. It's like Rob Halford's solo group covering Judas Priest songs...they just lack without the talents of K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton.

The new Venom covers alone don't make this album worth getting....but there is something else that is. This compilation contains three new Cronos songs that were supposed to appear on the 1996 Cronos solo album Triumvirate. Sadly that album would never get released due to the Cronos's reunion with Venom in 1996 but thankfully three of the songs did see the light of day on this compilation. The songs are Know Evil, Babylon, and Ye of Little Faith. These songs are fan-fuckin-tastic! They are different than Cronos's other solo material. They first of all sound more fuckin evil. His singing is back to the great Cronos growls of the Venom of old. The songs are also a lot more raw and the lyrics are more dark. These are not the commercial influenced metal of Cronos's solo albums. I couldn't believe how much I liked these songs! It's just a shame the full length album full of these types of songs was never released. Hell, it probably would have turned out better than the Venom reunion album Cast in Stone.

What's also cool is that the booklet to this compilation shows the cover art to Triumvirate saying "1996 release". It also says a Cronos video called Access All Areas was also to come in 1996. A tear comes to my eye that they never did. Hopefully Cronos will dig deep down in his black heart and decide to release Triumvirate (and even that video) to fans in the future because judging from these three new songs....it would have been a killer.

As you can see this compilation is worth getting for three songs....and not for the passable Venom covers.