Warthur
With the departure of Mantas following Resurrection, Cronos had made his authority over Venom complete; however, if Metal Black is anything to go by he doesn't seem to have done much is interesting with it. Giving the album a title that is clearly intended to be a callback to Black Metal is a fairly clear statement to intent, but I honestly don't think this one is going to nearly have as much influence on extreme metal as its predecessor. It's got a noisy, raucous, even mildly dissonant sound, resulting mainly from the rather eccentric mix which seems to be intended to make the music sound more extreme and blackened and generally disguise the fact that this is the same old proto-thrash Venom have always churned out. On the whole, it feels like a big misstep to me.