On November 1, 1982, Newcastle's VENOM released "Black Metal" through Neat Records — the second album that gave an entire subgenre its name. Recorded at Impulse Studios in Wallsend with Keith Nichol co-producing, it captured Cronos (bass, vocals), Mantas (guitar) and Abaddon (drums) at their most unhinged, with Cronos using his studio engineering experience to chase "the heaviest sound I could get". The title track, "Countess Bathory", "Buried Alive" and "Don't Burn the Witch" mixed NWOBHM roots with raw speed, satanic lyrics and a cellar-gig production that sounded like nothing else in 1982. Musically it was still closer to heavy metal than to what came later, but its imagery and attitude carved essential features of black metal in stone. Thrash, death metal and the Norwegian second wave all owe a debt to these three loud men from the North East of England.
