Look out America! Venom Inc. are BACK and ready to unleash some Prime Evil. Ever the busy man, it was nothing short of miraculous that we were able to nail down the driving force of this vehicle, Tony “Demolition Man” Dolan, for a “Witching Hour” chat on “Black Xmas” eve eve, mere weeks ahead of his stateside invasion! In this comprehensive discussion, Demolition Man reflects upon continuing Venom Inc. after the departure of Mantas, returning to the United States, and the possibility of a new Atomkraft album (the answer to which just might shock you).
Greetings Demolition Man and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Demolition Man: I’m very happy to see you! I wish you a very happy season. However you celebrate or don’t celebrate, I wish you a very happy season with your family and friends. It’s nice to see you and be here in Chicago! It’s a bit cold. It was nice yesterday, and we hope it’s gonna be nice tomorrow. It might not be, but who cares, right?
Exactly! You’re going to be in Chicago, or rather West Chicago, sooner than later, on Monday, January 20 at the WC Social Club. Venom Inc. returns!
DM: Can I just say that Chicago is close to my heart. I’ve played Reggies so many times. Chicago is right in my heart, so we had to put Chicago in. West Chicago was as close as I could get with the date that was available, but it’s a special day anyway, so please come out because the next day is my birthday. It’s a travel day, so I’m gonna be celebrating my birthday on the 20th instead of the 21st in Chicago with you guys. Please come out. Let’s have a ball! Let’s drink some whiskey and cause some freaking mayhem.
All the more reason to come to the show! Before we hop into this interview, I wanted to tell a story because you mentioned Reggies. To this day, one of the most memorable shows of my life was when Venom Inc. played Reggies in 2017 with Goatwhore and Toxic Holocaust.
DM: Yeah, that was 2017!
That was my first time seeing Venom Inc. I was 18 years old and had just started. I remember you guys going into “Welcome to Hell” and the pit just going insane. For the rest of the night, it was nonstop. My favorite memory of the evening, however, and I know it was a total coincidence, but I remember at one point, you took a swig of water and you spit it up into the air. It landed right on my face and I didn’t even care. It was all part of the mayhem!
DM: Oh my God, I’m so sorry about that! The thing is, when you’re in the moment, it’s all part of the expression, what I do with my whiskey or my water or whatever. Of course, we had all that pandemic stuff going on and everything else. Sometimes it’s flu season and I don’t even think about that, so I do it. Fortunately, some people think it’s all part of the mayhem, but sometimes people get real pissed off and go, “Man, you spat your shit all over me!” I’m like, “I’m so sorry!” You know, when you’re in the moment, that’s true freedom. There’s no rules, is there? Just let it happen! Anyway, I do apology to anybody who was offended that I spat all over them *laughs* but hey, it’s rock n’ roll, isn’t it?
Absolutely. Venom Inc. is about to return to the States for a lengthy tour, leaving no town left unscathed with the wrath of true black metal. How dies it feel to be coming back to America and what’s the energy in the band looking like?
DM: Obviously, for those of you who don’t know, I was born in the UK, but I emigrated into Ontario in Windsor, which is obviously Detroit. In the early ’70s, before I came back to the UK, I spent my formative years growing up right on the doorstep of the US. It’s always held a special place in my heart and Venom, the original Venom, never really toured a lot there. They did some shows, but a lot of stuff got cancelled. When you play the Fillmores and stuff like that, do you go and do a club tour? For me, I was born of the punk era, so a club’s a club. A show’s a show. 1 person, 10 people, 1,000 people: It makes no difference to me. A show’s a show!
For me, knowing the club scene and the music scene in the US, right across the country, from coast to coast and north to south, it’s always been so vibrant, so ingenious, so innovative. It’s created so much. Fuck, it gave the world rock n’ roll for starts from the delta blues. For me, why wouldn’t you be in America and seeing that beautiful land and meeting those incredible people and hearing all that fantastic music? It’s always close to my heart. Coming back, I always get very excited. I think I know probably every Walmart in every state by now, apart from Alaska and Hawaii. Everything at once right there, so why not? *laughs*
I’m always very excited and thrilled. This (tour) is a very long one. In fact, it’s only part one of two parts because we tried to put all the shows in. We’re not getting to Portland or Seattle. There’s a lot of places we didn’t get to. Just because of logistics, we couldn’t get the dates in order because it’s quite a problem. You’ve got some 18 hour drives. Some of them are close, but sometimes it’s 18 hours, so you gotta try to finish your show and get to the next one. That can be a bit of an issue. Trying to plot out the whole thing logistically has been a bit of a problem.
What I couldn’t do, I said, “Listen, that’s gonna be too difficult. We’ll stick ’em in part two, come back, and finish it off.” Any dates that you think, “Motherfucker! They’re not coming 3 or 4 hours away?” Don’t worry! I’m trying to get the next part to come right to you so we’ll be as far away as the other guys. Don’t worry about it. Then, we can include Canada, but this one is a long one. 30 or so dates. It’s kind of nonstop, but look where we’re going. From Knoxville to L.A. to San Francisco to New York, up near Boston and down to Florida, everywhere! Three shows in Florida, it just blows my mind we’re gonna do this.
I’ve got lots of friends coming out. In the Bay Area, they’re all gonna come out, the guys from Forbidden and Chuck Billy and all of them. When we get to Florida, we’ve got Kam Lee. Tons of people everywhere! Wiley Arnett from Sacred Reich is gonna come out. I’m gonna get some guests! The first show, I’ve got a special guest from two of my favorite bands, and a longtime friend will be coming out. He’ll be jumping up onstage and throwing some riffs down for the first show. That’s what’s exciting for me: Every show, there’s gonna be something special about it. That’s how it should be.
No night is gonna be the same. What someone sees on the first night is not gonna be what someone sees on the last night. When you put this thing together, logistically, you have to advance the shows, so you have to talk to the shows about logistics: What time you’re getting there, setups, meet and greets, all of that. What’s really nice is at least a third of the shows that have responded so far, they’re all friends. We’ve been there before. They’re like, “Hey! How are you doing? We can’t wait to see you.” It’s like you’re coming home.
We’re very much a British band, but we have the new lineup because, of course, Mantas had his second heart attack. Logistically, it was difficult. We got through the season. We’re grateful Mike Hickey, ex-Venom and ex-Carcass and ex-Cronos, helped us out with the second half of the US tour the season before. Last season, I got Curran Murphy, who is from Cleveland. Now he is an American native, of course, as he was with us with 72 Legions. I watched his band, who were brilliant, but I just watched him and thought, “That guy is fucking so good!” Of course, he was in Annihilator. He was in Nevermore. He’s done a million things.
If you give that guy the space, because he was one of two guitarists, I bet he’s like a firework going off. I took him to Indonesia. We played Hammersonic, just to see if we could continue playing while Mantas sat on the bench getting better. This guy did exactly what I thought. He went off like a fucking firework. It overwhelmed me! We did it all season. We went to South America with Possessed and this guy was like…wow, you’re made to do this. He’s one of the nicest people, one of the most incredible performers and players, and a tech-head beyond a tech-head. He’s just wonderful, but so is his energy.
JXN was with myself and Mantas in M:Pire of Evil. He’s so laidback, but what a technician. His favorite drummers are old school: Bill Ward, Ginger Baker, and players like that. He plays with that kind of feeling and that kind of heart, but of course, he was younger, so technically he was at the front edge. It’s very unusual that you get a younger guy playing with an older drummer’s heart, an older musician’s feel, but with the technical knowledge of today. The combination of those two with the shows, they’ve been so overwhelming. It’s been mind-blowing.
They’re fun to be with. The energy is really up. They’re hungry as fuck. When I put the US dates down, I was like, “This is the run it could be. I know it’s a bit long, 8 weeks.” They were like, “Yeah, yeah! As many as we can do! Can we do more?!” “Fucking hell?! How many more do you want to do?! All of them?! Right, OK!” *laughs* Which is brilliant because for the label, for the album, it just means that we get to do more shows, whereas we were limited slightly before with some festivals. Not as limited as the old days, but we were kind of limited.
Now, that’s been lifted. We can just drive the truck straight through. We’re kind of like Motörhead: Flip through the season, do some recordings, and get straight back out again. I love that. You live for that kind of thing. I’ve said it a few times now in recent interviews. I thought about at my age and I thought, I don’t need things. I don’t need stuff. I need to eat. I need to sleep. I’ve got a car and I’ve got somewhere to live. What do I need? I don’t need anything special. If I want to go to a beach, I can go to a beach. I don’t need to live by a beach; I can see a beach.
What am I doing this for? I’m doing it for the people because you connect with people. You get to smell different smells and meet different people and hear different accents and listen to stories and really connect to the music. That’s what’s so exciting and vibrant to me now. It’s generational! Obviously, I see some old friends. I see the same faces come too, the fans and stuff, but I see a lot of new people come in. Young fans come in who, when the question is, “Should you be doing this? Is there value in it?”, hey, if I walk into a club and there’s 30 people there and they’re all 18 years old, that’s the value right there.
They haven’t been able to see the bands that people my age got to see. If I can give them that experience, why shouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t I? That’s the whole point of it! It’s very exciting from that point of view. We’re all really ready to go and really excited by it. Of course, we have Salem’s Childe with us, who are from Indianapolis, Indiana. They’re a brilliant band of great guys. They’re really, really excited too. The undercard, I’m just explaining all this before you ask me *laughs* just to cut through some stuff.
What we did was I like to take a mixture of bands on, a mixture of styles because maybe you’re introducing a style of music to someone who didn’t think they liked it. Maybe they’re a bit black metal, but not so much death metal, or vice versa. Or maybe they’re hardcore or grindcore. If we mix up the bill, you might discover a band and a sound you never really did before. You’ll go away going, “Fucking hell! I didn’t think it was like that!” Then, you go and discover a whole new thing. There’s so much wonderful color in this fabric we call music, particularly with the underground. Hopefully, it’s gonna work.
The idea with this one was to carry just one band with us, but every venue at every place picked the best bands in that area, the bands that are so hungry, the bands that are working their tits off, working so hard in their area, and put them on the bill so that they get a platform. They get to do their thing. In a way, I think that’s great because we got all kinds of bands playing. It shows you what’s happening in your state, in your city. This is what you are producing right here at home, which you can support all the time!
You don’t have to wait for somebody to come all the way from Germany or wherever it is. You got them on your doorstep, so go see it! From a selfish point of view, I get to see all of this. If you think about it, in 30 shows, if you’ve got 4 bands coming from the area on a show, that’s 4 times 30. I get to see all of that new music! Woah, that’s amazing! I’ll go with a suitcase full of friends, music, memories. That’s more valuable than any book you can get.
Venom Inc. has gone through quite some changes since they last toured the States, the biggest change being the departure of Mantas from the fold. At what point did it become apparent to you that Mantas wouldn’t be returning, and did you have any internal doubts about continuing the band without his direct involvement?
DM: Yes and no, really. I heard that the drummer we had, Mr. (Jeramie) Kling had said he knew it was gonna happen, he called it, and everything else, but he didn’t know because we had a bit of an issue at the end of the US tour, before we went to play Mexico. I had to let him go. Obviously, he didn’t want to go and he wasn’t happy about that, but it was time. It was time for that to happen. I knew Mantas would be in recovery. I didn’t know what was gonna happen next. I just wanted to take a break so I could think about it.
Mantas is my brother. We’ve been together for so long. We play off each other. We just know each other so well. It’s like having your arm taken off. I can’t wear both gloves *laughs*. I’ll just wear one glove. That’s OK. I can wear one glove. What do you do? I thought, well, I did have commitments. Could that work? I had to do the second half of the tour. Fortunately, I got Mike Hickey. Even both me and Jeff (Mantas) said he did an amazing job. He’s an amazing individual and an incredible guitarist. Was it a perfect fit visually? Maybe yes, maybe no, but sound-wise, it was bang on.
I thought, “If Mantas wants to sit for longer, at least if I have to do it, we can still do it.” There’s still connective tissue. At no point did we make it out that there was anybody not coming back or we were replacing anybody, because I was doing that waiting for him to give me the clearance that he was feeling good. I wasn’t prepared to pressure him or anything else, but of course, it’s a business. It’s an industry. You have to keep the machine going, otherwise, what’s the point of doing everything you did? That’s the intention.
Then, he sat out for a whole season and a half. I kind of got the impression that he…he was never really one for touring. He didn’t feel that comfortable about touring. The travelling, he didn’t like. We always said if he could wake up at the show and then close his eyes and be back in his bed at home, he’d be happy to do every show, but that was becoming laborious for him. With the first heart attack, it was difficult. With the second heart attack, it just seemed impossible. He’s concerned. He didn’t wanna risk having a heart attack that’d kill him on an airplane running through Chicago O’Hare or Newark or Singapore or something like that.
My personal take is I’ll die doing this. If I die on the toilet, I die on a toilet in an airport in Japan. It makes no difference where I’m going. I’m just going. For him, he likes to have comfort around him. He likes to have familiarity, so he wanted to be at home. It became a bit difficult for him to want to travel. We did think about a couple of festivals. He was preparing for a festival before he had the second heart attack, and then he was like, “No, no, I’m not risking it.” I have to give him that.
He has a studio at him. He can create his music. He can just be at home and he can still be doing his music, which is great therapy for him. It’s good for him because he’s always done that. That’s what he does. I’m really happy. At the end of the day, when I had to equal it out: Would I want him to be in the band so everybody could see him keep doing this for him to die doing it? Or do I want him to be happy and comfortable and well and not dying at home? Well then, that’s the sacrifice. That’s what I prefer.
For me, I wanted to tour all my life. I enjoy touring. I enjoy taking the music to a new audience. I don’t think where we were already driving with somebody in the seat, it works, it’s brilliant, the response has been incredible. The fans are just losing their shit to the old music, the new music, the middle music. We can record new music. I don’t need to stop this, otherwise there’s no point in us doing this anyway. What if I died? Would they stop? No! What if he (Mantas) had died? Would I have stopped? No! I would’ve done it for his honor. It’s not about them going, “If one of us can’t do it, we shouldn’t do it.” No! That’s the whole point! We should do because that’s the legacy!
When you think of half of those soldiers at Hamburger Hill or D-Day, those soldiers, if they’d given up, if George Washington had given up, fucking America wouldn’t be America, would it? You don’t give up when you’re losing people. That’s when you dig in! That’s when you put everything into it to take it further because if you believe in the prize, the goal, “We’re gonna forge a new country.”, then you get a George Washington and he ends up being the first president. That’s why you do it. All of those stories from World War 2 of those heroes and Vietnam and Korea, they wouldn’t have happened if those guys had just given up, but that’s the answer: You don’t give up.
That’s the American ethos. That’s what makes America such an amazing country and produces so many amazing, talented, not just musicians, but athletes and people. Look at Donald Trump! Whatever your political view is, the guy said, “I’m gonna be president.” Look at what happened to him. He’s president, not once, but twice! That is mind-blowing! He could’ve quite easily have gone, “Fuck it. Fuck this.”, and stayed doing what he was doing, but he didn’t. He obviously, whatever your opinion is or whatever side of the fence you’re on, I don’t wanna get into that, that’s not my country or my president or anything, but whatever he believes, he believe in it so much that he put himself through that to get to the other end of it, for good or for bad, but he did.
All of that plays into my head when I thought it’s my responsibility to keep at this, to keep this thing going and to introduce new people as long as I can until I can’t. And enjoy yourself while you’re doing it! I didn’t an interview the other day with a guy who had seen several shows over the years. He was interviewing me with his son who was 13! I’m like, “Oh my God! They’re both coming out to see me!” They said, “Yep, we’re gonna come see you and take you around and introduce you.” That’s mind-blowing. That happens so many times with people who were friends.
A friend in Brazil met me years and years ago. The next time I went, he said, “Tony, can I come and see you?” “Yeah, yeah, of course you can.” “Could I bring my girlfriend?” “Yes!” So I meet him and meet his girlfriend. She’s very nice. The next time I see him, he goes, “We got married.” I’m like, “No way! That’s amazing!” She walks in the room. She’s got a little bump. “Oh my God! You’ve got a baby! This is amazing!” Fast forward again, I don’t see them. We’re on tour with a band and one of the girls in the band is their daughter, and I don’t even know it!
She’s on the tour and I’m talking to her all the time. I’m really being supportive and talking about Brazil. At the end of the tour, I speak to him and I go, “Yeah, we had this great tour. One of the girls in the band, she’s a musician, just like you said your daughter was playing.” He says, “Yeah, well that’s her!” I was like, “What?!” He said, “I thought that’s why you took her!” I had no idea that was her! It was completely by accident! I was like, “Shit!” Then, when I spoke to her at a festival, I said, “I didn’t know that was your dad!” She goes, “I thought you knew!” I said, “No!” I wonder why she talked as if she’d known me all her life, from day one *laughs*.
That is incredible. That’s remarkable. That kind of makes you feel old. It makes it feel like you’ve been around a while, but it also inspires you to go, “Wow, this is what we’re doing. This is what we’re creating.” It starts from the underground. While you’re digging a hole and you’ve got 6 or 7 friends who all love you. It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, they’re just gonna go, “You’re brilliant.” All of a sudden, you step that up and they bring 6 friends. Before you know it, you’re in an arena and you’re Metallica. That’s how it happens. It happens with people communicating to people.
It’s fantastic when those things happen. That inspires me to keep doing it. That was the decision in the end, instead of going, “That’s it.”, it’s, “Oh no, this is just the beginning. This is the point where I have to dig in. I have to put it up there. I have to climb up that hill and we have to take that gun. We have to stamp the flag right at the top.” You don’t get a monument like Arlington Cemetery or Washington D.C. of those men at Iwo Jima putting that American flag up unless that is everything. If you keep that image in your head when you think you can’t, you’ll know. If they can do it, you can. What they did was a lot more difficult then what you’re gonna be doing *laughs*.
In Mantas’ place on the last U.S. tour was Mykus, who fans best remember from the Calm Before the Storm era. Was he ever considered to come back for this tour, or was he all booked up? Furthermore, what was it like for you to play with him? I know neither of you were in Venom at the same time.
DM: Yeah, he did Calm Before the Storm with Venom. Cronos and the guys relocated to Boston, which is where Mike Hickey is from, or where he lived. He did (Cronos’) solo thing. Then I stepped in and we did the Prime Evil stuff. Then, Mike did Metal Black with Venom when Cronos redid Venom. I knew him, obviously, since the ’80s, and obviously admired he’s playing. He’s such a great, funny guy, and so laidback and so nice to be around, but I never got to play with him. The opportunity to play with him was like, “Oh my God, this will be absolutely fucking brilliant.”
I had the best time, the absolute best time with him. He was so gloriously great to be around. Everything’s so easy. He’s a consummate professional. Of course, when the shows were gonna come and Mantas had his second heart attack, Mike was the first person I thought of. I thought, “Let’s see if Mike wants to keep going.” He stopped teching for Joe Bonamassa and was working on his guitar collection. He collects vintage guitars, remakes them, and then sells, so he has this business going, but I knew he had a gap.
I asked him, but of course, Mike likes to have a bit of a drink. Unfortunately, he’d had one too many and the police had told him that was naughty, so he couldn’t leave America. I was like, “Fuck!”, so I had to wait. He said he could do American dates, but I needed him to come out of America. Mike, I hope you don’t mind me telling everybody. He’s good though! He’s not in trouble or nothing. He’d been a bit naughty, but that’s Mike. He takes it on the chin. That became a bit of a logistic problem. I couldn’t do anything with him outside of America for a period of time. Everything’s OK now, of course, and he will be joining me onstage when we get to Boston, definitely he will, so he’ll be popping up.
I had to keep that going, so I had considered that, but I think Mike…Mike would love doing the shows, but in the end, he was like, “I want to go back to playing regular guitar instead of trying to keep up with all this shit all the time.” He’s getting old too *laughs*. You know, this is the guy who was in fucking Carcass! I’m like, “What?! What’s wrong with you?!” He was like, “Yeah, I like playing the rock-blues stuff.” So many years with Joe Bonamassa, that is. He’s too skilled, so for him, it’s a no brainer.
It was a consideration, but at the end of the day, you need somebody whose heart’s completely into the enterprise. It is about that. There’s a million musicians, incredible musicians. Anytime anything’s happened, when Abaddon walked out or what happened with Mantas or even with Kling, the drummer after Abaddon, I just got inundated with guitarists and drummers going, “I’m ready if you need anything.” I’m like, “That was really great.” I’m thinking, OK, I’m watching the videos and stuff like that and thinking, “Fucking hell, these people are amazing!” You could go anywhere you wanted to with this.
Everybody can play the songs, but for me, it’s not just about playing the songs. You have to be the songs. You have to be the music. It has to be real. I’ve done that ever since I started playing music, particularly 36 years of Venom, or whatever. Interpreting songs that I didn’t write, how do I do “Bloodlust” when I wasn’t on the single that I didn’t write? I have to be it! I have to be in that frame of the lyric and the sound and the music. I have to be that vampire. I have to be that aggressive. I’m gonna fucking come and fucking drink all your blood, yeah I am! You gotta be that.
It’s like playing the blues, a B.B. King or Stevie Ray Vaughan or something like that. You gotta play from your soul. You might be technically OK, but you’re not Eddie Van Halen or Steve Vai. Why is that? You can play all the technical notes, but it’s not just about the sweeps and the arpeggios. Their playing is an extension of their character. Yngwie Malmsteen is that guitar, is that sound, is that playing. You have to remember that’s your voice. We all have different accents and different sounds and different voices. When you play a guitar in particular, or a bass in my case, it’s an extension of that voice. It’s part of your character.
Lemmy could play the bass. So could Paul McCartney, but they’re two different bass players and you can tell which is which. How? Because that one was Lemmy and that one is Paul McCartney. It’s that kind of thing. You can distinguish the voices just as if you heard them speaking to you. That’s much part of it. I don’t think Mike felt he connected in that particular way. He could play all the stuff easily, but he didn’t connect in that way as Mantas WAS that. He was that music. When you hear those songs, it is him. It is him sitting and talking to you. That’s him.
If it wasn’t him, I had to have someone who had that in them. Curran Murphy has that in him. When he plays his guitar and he plays all the parts, they’re just oozing out of him. It’s like listening to him talk about a phone directory. He’s just going through every line, every page. You’re not under any confusion as to where it’s coming from and all the information that’s coming at you. He is that. He is that thing. I shouldn’t have said phone directory. That sounds kind of boring! Let’s say Encyclopedia Britannica! That’s better *laughs*. That’s more exciting, or a book on black holes in space!
JXN’s the same. We played a festival in Newcastle just the other week. The next night before me and Curran drove down for him to fly back to Cleveland, JXN was playing a pub. Brian Ross, the singer from Satan, his son has a band where they just do covers. We went to see that and JXN was doing (Cream’s) “White Room” while he was playing the drums. It was fucking brilliant, absolutely brilliant! He sounded amazing. I’m watching him and I’m like, “That guy is music. He is what he’s doing.” That’s the difference. He’s not just doing it because it feels good or for his ego. It’s who he is.
That’s why I think this combination is working so well and feels so good. We’re all of the same thing. I think in the early days, whether you criticized Venom for their adaptability at their instrumentation or their songwriting or production, there may be many things wrong with it if you criticize it, but you can’t criticize the conviction that they had. It was real conviction. You have to have that if you’re playing this, particularly any Venom connective thing. We’re Venom Inc. We incorporate all of that with us. We’re not the second Venom, we’re Venom Inc. It’s part of us. That’s the whole point of it, but you can’t do any of it unless you have that conviction.
If you don’t have that conviction, an audience will sniff you out from a million yards and just piss on your leg. They’ll go, “Yeah, you don’t believe in that shit so I don’t believe in that shit either.” But if you go out there and you are absolutely giving everything and believe 100% in what you’re doing, they’ll pick up on that, they’ll connect to that, and they’ll stay with you. That’s why we’re keeping going and that’s why the personalities are this way.
How does this current incarnation of the band compare or contrast to the Prime Evil lineup? Furthermore, can we expect new music on the horizon?
DM: Yeah, first of all, the Prime Evil thing, it’s based on that obviously. You need parents to grow, to look after to until you can start on your own two feet, so that’s the process. You’re born, they look after you, you take your influences from there, and then you make them your own. I think we’re at that stage where we’re making it our own. Into Venom Inc., we started to move into…with Avé, I wanted to connect the tissue, so it had to be connected to everything that had come before and what was gonna happen next.
We pushed the bull out on a couple of things on that, but we didn’t go too far away from it. We intimated that there were other things we could do, “Dein Fleisch” for example, or “Black n’ Roll”, so we could just open it up a little bit. Then, on the last one, There’s Only Black, we changed into another gear with that intensity and that speed. That’s the step. That’s the progression. There’s no point in being static. I know people want to hear Metallica playing the same album. You know, that might be good for you because you wish it was 1983 everyday, but for them it’s not 1983 everyday. Obviously, they’re gonna change somewhat.
You have to be generous to new fans in that the album that sparked you, the song that sparked you to catch that band and to think about that band, maybe the 10th album got somebody else who was 16. You were 16 then. Now somebody else is 16. That album that just came out is gonna be their Master of Puppets or Ride the Lightning or Reign in Blood or whatever it is. You have to be generous in that. You are a piece of that history, but the history keeps going. If the music keeps going, then so does the history.
New fans are gonna be you, just you in 10 years time or 20 years time. That’s what happens! Hopefully, from that era, that’s what we’re doing. I do sprinkle it in with the classics because how could you not? You’re standing onstage. You could play “Witching Hour” and “Black Metal” and you’re not going to? Fuck it, of course you’re going to! That’s part of the celebration of it all! That’s the incorporation of who we are. That’s our mecca. It is part of us.
New music-wise, absolutely sure. 2025 is gonna be quite a big year. It’s turning into something kind of strange. There’s a new boxset that’s gonna be put together and go out on Cherry Red, which I just found out. Nobody’s told me I couldn’t say it, so I’ve just said it. You’re the first one who’s heard it. That’s gonna be amazing, hopefully. They’re working on that. The book I did, a book on the Demolition years, which was released in Italian, I’m looking for an English translation publisher now, so hopefully that will go out. There’s tons of stuff.
Two live albums are gonna come out, a new EP, which will have an introduction to the lineup that’s coming. I’ll be putting a couple of new songs on there. Then, a new album at the end of the year. Amongst that, we have two parts of America to do, two hits of 30, so two long tours. Following in the middle is Europe, and then South America. Then, we have some festivals in Asia at the end of the year. I don’t know how I’m gonna squeeze it all in, but if you don’t try, how do you know? I intend to. It’ll be an intense year, but it’ll be bang-bang-bang. There’ll be lots of stuff going off, like millennium fireworks.
It’s very exciting for us, and I hope for the fans. There wasn’t an intention to have so long between Avé and There’s Only Black. It just seemed to be a long, long time. It was unintentional, but it was because our live performances did take control over everything. We were just nonstop touring. Every time we sat down, we’d have more offers. Then, it would just keep going. We didn’t get a chance to sit down. This time, I thought, “Well, tour looks like it’s gonna be full on. We’ll just use a gap. We’re gonna go for it and see what we can achieve.”
They’re all things that are on the list. There’s a couple of other things that are quite exciting as well, all on the list. We’ll just take them as they come. There’s no point of living beyond your means. Don’t think of the future. Wait ’til it comes. Be in the moment and deal with it when it gets there. There’s 24 hours in a day. I work 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, 365 days, we can do anything we want! That’s what we’ll go for. See what happens!
When it comes to creating a Venom Inc. setlist, are there any challenges in terms of balancing the new material, the classic Prime Evil era, and those early ’80s hits?
DM: Challenges, yeah *laughs*. Doing any kind of setlist that involves any Venom material, and obviously our material, is a challenge because we’ll do an hour and a half, or just a little bit over, but I could do 4 hours. If I did 4 hours of everything I could think of, B-sides, obscure stuff, deep cuts, and everything that Venom Inc.’s done, you name it, I can guarantee you when I get off stage, the first person will say to me, “How come you didn’t play this song?” For fuck sake! You can never play everything *laughs*.
My intention was initially, when I started the Venom Inc. thing, or was asked to begin it, and I talked to the boys, was let’s just play every single thing we could play, everything you’ve ever done, everything we’ve ever done, just play everything, so at least if we play it once, people have heard it. We did “Red Light Fever”, everything off Welcome to Hell, everything off Black Metal, all the singles. There were only two B-sides we didn’t do, but we even did “Manitou”. “Woman” I didn’t do. We did three tracks off of At War with Satan, so there’s a couple of tracks we haven’t done. Then, we moved to Possessed.
We really buried ourselves in this and were getting through it. That was with the guys. Of course, now with the Venom Inc. albums, I wanna play my period because you’ll hear this from Temples of Ice or The Waste Lands or Prime Evil. I think now I’ve played everything but two tracks off Prime Evil, “Skeletal Dance” and “Into the Fire”, which are now gonna be in the set for the USA. We have all of Prime Evil, half of Temples of Ice, songs from The Waste Lands, almost every track off Avé and the new album, save for two, and of course classics as well.
When I go down to look at the set, I try and keep the flow, but I also want to keep that connection, the linear connection. The reason we might open with a classic Venom song, then go straight into a brand new song, and then go into a middle period song, then come back again to an old song and keep flip flopping like that is because I wanna build this ark. If we can play all of those songs, and you can back to back say “War” with “Live Like an Angel” with “There’s Only Black”, for example, if you can do that…one was written in 1981, one was done in 2015, and one was done in 2023, ’22, whatever it was. If I then put “Parasite” in there, which was 1989, that’s a lot of years between the two of them, but if I can play all those songs and they all feel like the same band playing them, then that shows you there is know demarcation between the music. There is just that band playing those songs. That’s the intention.
While it’s very hard to put together a setlist, because I’m very conscious that I want to give everybody a slice of everything and not leave anything out, it’s also very difficult because every song is a fucking great song to play. And everybody, particularly with the first two albums, or the first three albums, there’s so much material there. Everybody wants to hear everything! How do you make sure nobody is pissed you didn’t play this? I’ve kind of worked on this situation now where, in the old days, me and you would go and see a show. We’d fucking lose our minds. We might even get a setlist, but the only people who knew what happened at the show was our buddies in the pub bar the next day, or if we went to school, or who we talked to in our circle.
A guy in Malaysia or a guy in Poughkeepsie, he didn’t know what the fuck happened last night because he’s going next Tuesday. Now, with technology, the first night we play in Santa Ana, if someone sees the setlist, they’ll take a photo and it’ll be up on the internet. The guy at the last show at Brick by Brick when we get to San Diego won’t have to run around the whole fucking country. He’s gonna know what’s gonna happen. So I’m like, “Don’t take a picture of the setlist!” That’s like waiting 10 years to see the sequel to your favorite film and someone tells you, just before you go and see it, what happens! You twat! I don’t wanna know *laughs*!
What I do, because of that, and because each night is different and each crowd is different, each city is different, each part of the country…yeah, it’s all America, but Dallas is not like somewhere in Michigan or Philadelphia. They’re very different. Knoxville is definitely not Brooklyn or Queens. You’re in these amazing places with different ways of thinking and responding to the music. I wanna make sure that somebody in Knoxville is gonna get a different set than somebody in Brooklyn who’s gonna hear something different than somebody in Detroit who’s not gonna hear the same show as they’re gonna hear in San Francisco.
Obviously, the songs will be in there that we’re playing every night, but they’ll be maybe in a different order. Maybe those two songs are not in and two different songs are in. I want nobody to know what’s going to happen. It might be this. “I heard they’re playing this.”, and then you don’t play it. You play a song and you go, “Oh, they didn’t play that, but they played this.” Then someone else goes, “Fuck, I didn’t hear that! They played something else!” The guy at the third night goes, “We’ll they’re REALLY gonna play that.” And then you play something else, and he goes, “Oh shit! They didn’t play either of those!”
I want to just have that. That’s the whole point of having this network of amazing musicians and bands that I’ve grown to love and know over the years. They all live in America, so it’s like, fucking hell, I’m on your doorstep! If you’re gonna come out to the show, yeah, you can hang and have a beer and be a fan. You can also put a guitar on and put a microphone on, jump onstage and do something with me. Why not? That’s another dimension I get to add. It’s gonna be thunderous. Even I’m not sure what’s gonna happen on the night we get to Chicago, but I know it’s gonna be fucking blinding. Something’s gonna happen in Chicago that isn’t gonna happen anywhere else in America. I love that. It’s exciting!
I just got excited hearing we may or may not get “Skeletal Dance” because that’s my favorite song on Prime Evil!
DM: There you go! Is it really? You’re not alone. I get so many requests about that. In an interview the other week, someone said to me, “What are your favorite Venom songs?” I went down the list and he asked, “What about “Skeletal Dance”?” “I hate that song!” It took me 2 seconds to write it. Abaddon had written a poem. It didn’t scan, so I kind of worked it in and made it fit. Then, Mantas came up with the intro at the beginning, which I loved and I thought, “Oh, that’s great!” It was always a song I just didn’t get through and was never on the live list, but so many people have gone, “Oh, “Skeletal Dance”!” I thought, “I gotta put it in the set.”
The difference is, and I did this a lot of the time with “Dead of the Night” and “Lady Lust”, I’d suggest those songs and they’d go, “What? Nah. Fucking hell, nah. Shit no. Those are throwaway songs.” Then, I’d convince them to play it, because it was a deep cut. We’d play it, the audience would go nuts, and then it became part of the set because you realize once you play it, now, in the formation you are, that there’s extra life in it. There’s something else going on there.
We did a run through of “Skeletal Dance” and even I was going, “Fucking hell, it didn’t sound like that the first time I heard it, and I wrote it! Oh shit!” Yeah, it’s a good one for the set, and you’re gonna be quite happy when that comes up. Now, of course, I’ve given that away because you made a point about it, so I’ve gotta put it in for you. It’s in the set!
Right on! Speaking of Prime Evil, I wanted to touch upon a couple interesting curios from that era, the first regarding a report from Kerrang! claiming that you had left the band over their satanic themes and imagery: A report that was obviously false, and was apparently fed to the press by Cronos. Could you tell us more about this incident and how did the band find out it was Cronos spreading these lies?
DM: Yeah, I was working as a sound op at a festival thing in Newcastle. One afternoon, I saw the manager, and Abaddon walked in towards the amphitheater that I was mixing the sound at. It looked like they were coming towards me on purpose, so I thought, “Oh wow! They’re not just here for the festival. It looks like they’re coming to talk.” So they got up and I said, “Alright guys! What the fuck are you doing here?” “We want to have a chat with you.” “Oh, OK.” I got someone to switch positions and I went, “Yeah, what’s up?” “So what’s this from Kerrang!?” “What are you talking about?”
They pulled out a copy, showed me, and I went, “What the fuck?! Who’s done that?!” “Well it says it’s you.” “Well it fucking wasn’t me, was it?!” First of all, I didn’t have a phone in my flat. How could I phone when I didn’t have a phone? In those days, for anybody that doesn’t know, we didn’t have mobile phones *laughs*, so in order to call anybody, you had to use a landline or you had to go to a phone box and put money in. There was no phone box in my area because…there used to be, but they used them as lavatories, so there were no phones in there. They were just shit boxes.
I didn’t have a phone. I was like, “How could I phone?” Plus, I was at work, so I was like, “I don’t understand.” After work, I went to the Neat Records offices and called Kerrang!. I called the journalist and said, “Hey, this is Tony Dolan, what the fuck is that? I never said that!” They went, “Well, some guy called us up. He said he was you with a Geordie accent.” I went, “Fucking hell! Do you know how many people live in Newcastle with a Geordie accent?! Just because they say it and they got a Geordie accent, they must be me? That’s absolute horseshit. That wasn’t me and I want a retraction.”
Very kindly, they put a retraction in the next issue which said it was a hoax. I was like, “Who in the fucking hell is doing that?” Of course, there was only one person who was bitch-slapped. To be fair, I totally understand now why he felt that way, but for me, I didn’t go in to do anything bad. They were all my friends, plus a band I really loved, plus a band I’d grown with, adjacently with my band (Atomkraft) who was on the same label. When I was asked to do it, I didn’t think I was replacing anybody. I just thought I was playing music with my friends because the other guy didn’t want to do it anymore.
Apparently, he did want to do it. He didn’t want it to not happen without him, so when he petulantly threw the toys down the stairs, he thought they’d all break and that would be it, but Abaddon wanted to continue. I got Mantas to come back in. We made an agreement that I’d do it if he did it, and he said he’d do it if I did it, so we did it. We were having fun. I don’t think any of us considered, certainly we didn’t consider it was anti-the guy before. It was not an attack on Conrad (Cronos), so I didn’t quite get it at that point, but I was puzzled as there was only one person who might have cause to do it, or maybe one of his associates.
Then, I found out much later in the journey from one of his best friends that yeah, he’d called them up. They were there, he got high and called them up, pretended to be me, and did that whole thing to kind of push a negative thing on the band. The album was about to drop. *laughs* I don’t know how…obviously, he didn’t know what was gonna go out on the album, but I wrote “Blackened are the Priests”, “Carnivorous”, “Prime Evil”. It was kind of salacious stuff. If I was worried about them telling me they were satanic, it’s like, hang on.
I was there when they recorded Black Metal, the album, from the first single. I think I would’ve guessed they were satanic, or at least if they were actual Satanists, which they weren’t. We were singing about Satan. It wasn’t a surprise, was it? It just seemed a bit bizarre. Who was that aimed at? Anybody who knew I’d been in Kerrang! and I did have a band and I was in the British music scene and that was a British magazine, so it was like, which audience are you telling as if I’d just turned up from the post office and someone went, “You know that letter you just gave? They’re all Satanists.” “What? Fucking hell! Dude, I live in that house! I live with those people. I go to work at the post office, but I live with those people.” *laughs* It just didn’t make any sense to me.
Like I said, years later, I kind of reconvened and understood because it was his baby. It was his whole way of being. Once after America and he went back to Venom, because when he left the first time, it was, “I don’t the satanic stuff. I don’t wanna do all that anymore. I wanna do something else.” He fancied himself doing a David Lee Roth/Van Halen type thing and he had amazing guitarists, so why not? He’s a good bass player and a good singer, so it’s like, yeah, sure. I think you could expand yourself, but I think that he felt that his identity was that, so that’s why he went back to it and that’s why he remains and does it his way. That’s fantastic.
People ask, “Because he’s out there doing it, how do you feel?” I go, “I wish he’d do more shows. I wish he’d tour.” There’s people all over the world. I’ve seen it. I’ve heard it. There’s people all over the world who would quite happily be there. He doesn’t have to be arm wrestling me. Just go out and play to the fans. I don’t give a shit if you play or don’t play, but if you’re asking me, I think you should play because I’m meeting fans who would love to see you play. I think you should do more shows and not focus on the money. Focus on the bands for a little bit.
Maybe that would be good for everybody. It’s up to him how he does it, but I understand now why all that stuff was going on back then. Back then, it didn’t make any sense to me. I was like, “What the fuck? Who gives a fuck.” But now, I totally get it. He felt that I was a usurper. I was doing something bad, but no. I was making sure the flag was staying at the top of the flagpole, that’s how I looked at it. When I let go of the rope, he was there to grab it. Fucking brilliant. Why not? Now we’ve both got a hold of the knot. I think that’s great. More is better. Nobody is gonna miss that Venom existed if we’re both out there kicking the snot out of everything. Brilliant!
I also wanted to ask about this here EP, Tear Your Soul Apart, and specifically two songs: “The Ark” and “Civlised”. Is there any reason in particular these songs were left off Prime Evil? I’ve always felt “The Ark” was one of the most underrated cuts in the Venom canon.
DM: Funny enough, that’s back in the set *laughs*! Curran loves the song and wanted to put it in the set. We haven’t played it live yet, but it’s coming. We did do “Civilised” during Live ’90. It was part of our set, but it was just…we wanted the album to be loud. When you’re recording vinyl, it wasn’t like CD. CD, you had the capacity to put as many song as you wanted. People tend to put 15, 16 songs on a CD, or 18 or 21. Too many songs! There’s just too much. You’re overloaded.
With albums, you were roundabout. You had 20 minutes a side. That would maximize the volume you would have, so you’d have a high fidelity volume record. The grooves were a bit wider. Once you started adding too many songs, the album actually physically was quieter. You could only push the volume so far when you were mastering, so that was a conscious decision to keep it as loud as possible. Classic Venom: It goes to 11. That was it. We just looked at the track list, the running order. Those two didn’t sit anywhere we thought worked. The way we had it seemed to work, so we had them leftover.
The Live ’90 Marquee video did so well, people loved it, that we thought, “OK, maybe we should do something in between records.”, because we were touring. We didn’t have to do much work because we had the live tracks and we had the two leftover tracks. We couldn’t get into the studio because of the touring schedule, so it just meant we already had the music. We could put it together and put it out to give the fans something extra. That was the only reason they were on there. We wanted to use them.
I’m a firm believer that if you’re writing songs, good or bad, and you finished them, and they’re produced and you got the recordings, why put them under your bed? What’s the point in doing that? Even if you don’t particularly like the song, like we just talked about “Skeletal Dance”, it’s not a favorite of mine, but it is for you and it is for a lot of people. Would I not play that because I don’t like it so much as you do? No. It’s not up to me. It’s your music.
You’re the one who got the album. You’re the one who listened to it. You’re the one who tells me what you like and don’t like, so if I’m in front of you and you want to hear that, I think I have respect enough for you and your support that I owe you that. If I can do it, I should do it. That’s why I do it, because it’s my thanks to you. Thank you for getting the album. Thank you for loving the music. Thank you for being here.
With a lot of bands, they go, “We do what we want to do.” Great, so you go onstage and play a whole load of fucking songs the fans didn’t want to hear from an album they don’t want to hear. That’s OK. That’s your decision, but these fans just bought all your fucking merchandise and tickets to your show and you’re telling them it’s not up to them what they hear. Well, yes, I suppose if you’re thinking of yourself, it isn’t, but in this case I think if you’re touring and you expect these people to promote your music and promote you and pay you to come and play, I think they have some rights.
They’re fans of you. They’re supporting you. You can at least give them something that they want, rather than just tell them what they’re going to have and if they don’t like it, tough shit. Right, well what if they went home and they didn’t buy any of your shit anymore? Then none of them bought any of your shit? Within a year, you’ll be sitting there all by yourself, motherfucker, going, “Oh, why doesn’t anybody like me anymore?” That could happen. Do you want that to happen?
It’s always one of those analogies when you’re in a band and start a band, you want your friends to come. When you’re kids in high school, all your buddies and family, they think you’re fantastic. Whether you are or you’re not, they just love you, so they think whatever you’re doing is amazing, but you wanna get to people you don’t know. If they say they really like what you’re doing, now you’re doing it for real. You keep trying to expand your audience so you ask people to come, you go around to all the bars, you’re really nice to people, you go to shows and you give people your flyers, being really cool about it.
Then, all of a sudden, you’re in an arena somewhere. You get out of your limousine and someone goes, “Can I get an autograph?”, and you go “Fuck off.”, or you just walk past them and ignore them. Oh right, so when you haven’t got anybody, you want all these people and you’re prepared to do anything to get them to come, but once you’ve got them all and they’re all paying you, then they’re not worthy of anything. No, I think they’re more worthy now than they were back then.
Back then, they were just trying to support you anyway they could, but now, they’re actually paying you because they’re buying all your stuff and coming to your shows and travelling for 5 hours through all kinds of weather to buy your t-shirts, or flying across the country, following you for 10 shows and buying all your merchandise, spending thousands of dollars of their hard earned money. You want a meet and greet, so they get to walk in, stand in front of you, one picture, one album, and out you go? For a fucking photograph, it’s like, wow, that’s your meet and greet? I think they should come around to your house for fucking tea and a scrumpet *laughs* spend an afternoon.
You can’t talk to everybody. If you do a meet and greet and there’s 10 people, I can spend time with 10 people. If I’m James Hetfield and 10,000 people wanna pay for the meet and greet, I can’t meet 10,000 people, so I understand there’s a process there, but there’s a way to be with the fans and a way not to be. I think you should always be as gracious and humble as Lemmy was, even when you’re not feeling up to it, even when you’re not feeling so good. It’s not their fault. What if that one person’s one moment is the only moment in their life they’ll ever get this close to you and get to actually talk to you and say hello and you fuck ’em off? I don’t know. I don’t know if this is their moment, but I know what I would feel like when I’m a fan if it was my moment, so I’m not prepared for them to lose that moment.
In this day and age, we’ve seen classic metal bands with multiple incarnations unite for all-star lineup tours and albums. If the opportunity presented itself for Venom to do a show of this nature, consisting of the classic early ’80s lineup, yourself, and beyond, would you partake in it? Why or why not?
DM: Yes! I was yes-ing as soon as you said it because I knew where it was going *laughs*. We talked about this. When the Black Metal anniversary was happening, I was asked, “Would you come and headline the main stage at Alcatraz?” We did a whole series of festivals doing that. At Keep it True in Germany, we did the whole Hammersmith ’84 show. We played the whole set there, inclusive of the Black Metal stuff, so we did the whole Black Metal thing. We had Nick Barker, ex-Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth, join us for two big festival shows playing the Black Metal album. It was amazing.
I thought, “I’m not on that album. Why are you asking me?” “We want you to do it.” “OK, you didn’t ask Conrad? OK, I’ll play it because it means something to people and it means something to me too, and of course to Mantas.” So we went out and did it and it was amazing. When that was coming up, one of the things I began saying to Jeff about that was, “What if we could make this happen? I get Clive Archer (Jesus Christ) who did the first demos to do “Angel Dust” and “Raise the Dead”. Get the first singer up there to do a couple songs. Jim Clare, Mike Hickey, Antton from Resurrection, Metal Black, and Hell. Obviously, Rage and Dante, my boys, Mantas and Abaddon, of course. You could have an amazing show.
I saw Destruction do that at Wacken and I loved it. They had all three drummers on there. It was just great. I thought, “This is amazing. This is the legacy!” For me, I think the…obviously, the original three aren’t getting back together because they hate each other and they fight all the time and there’s all the money laundering and the arguing and the stealing of each other and all the lies and everything that keeps going, which is a Venom curse. But I think beyond that, me and Conrad, me and Cronos being onstage doing songs together as a crossover point, that would blow their minds. That would be incredibly powerful and I think it would be just next level.
I agree with you. I’d love to see a show where we all did that. You can end with the original three playing “Warhead” and “The Seven Gates of Hell”. Then, at the very end, Clive Archer comes on and you close with “Angel Dust” or something like that. We actually do a retro thing. We go through the journey. We go back and forth through the journey of everybody. I know for a fact that Rage and Dante in Cronos’ Venom now, they were totally into that idea too. They were totally into that idea happening. I think it’s hard for Cronos to want to do it, only because he has the control over Venom now and the merchandise. He does his thing. Why should he give that away?
I think it’s a way of thinking. For me, and I think differently to it, of course, but for me, I wouldn’t want to take anything away. I want to add to the legacy, add to our history, bring it and show the legions across the world there’s no separation. We’re all one brotherhood. We’re all one family. We’re all one Venom! That’s the whole point. I’ve said it a million times. I said it when I joined, I’ll say it now, I’ll say it until I die: I don’t give a fuck where or how or when you find Venom. Just find Venom, because I never wanted a world WITHOUT a Venom. To have had a Venom and to have a Venom, there’s value in that.
To be able to bring all of that together in one big show would be mind-blowing. It would be incredible for fans and would be incredible for us all. I think that would be wonderful. We’re aging quick, so if they’re gonna do it, we better do it quick! Some of us are not surviving I think, but I think it’s a wonderful idea. It just ties everything together. It’s not about cross-promoting me against that. That’s all horseshit. It means nothing to fans. They don’t give a fuck about that. They just care about the music. Put your ego to the side and think about the fans! What would the fans like? How amazing would it be for them? So yeah, it’s a big yes from me if someone was there and wanted to do it. If Conrad wanted to do it, I’m fucking right there beside him.
Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of Atomkraft’s classic debut album, Future Warriors. Looking back, what memories come to mind from that era and what are your favorite songs off of it?
DM: I think that album was special. By the time we managed to get a record deal to put the record out, it was 1985. The ship had already left port, so it looked like we were late to the race, but we were kind of proto-thrash, pre-thrash, more extreme when there was no extreme in ’79, much like Venom of the same era. There were a lot of pockets of those all over the planet, but nobody had made a mark. Nobody got records out. Venom pushing through the barrier meant that we all could do that. An independent record company sprang up because they realized you could market that music, whereas the corporates were like, “That just sounds like a ripe bag of shit. We’re not investing in that.” *laughs* So they stuck with their Styxes and their Totos and their Journeys and Bon Jovis, while this whole thing was happening underneath, bubbling away.
Atomkraft was spawned out of that. By the time, like I said, 1985, a lot of the songs on that album were written between ’79 and ’83. Different people were playing in there. The guitarist there, Rob (Mathew), was 16 years old! He’d been in bands with his friends, but had never done a tour, never been in a studio like that. I think that for me was remarkable. His playing was incredible. I’d be like, “Fuck.” He handled it so, so well. I remember getting on the first ever tour bus for him to go on tour and his mum ran across to me before I went on the bus. She went, “Tony, Tony! Could you make sure he changes his underwear everyday because he’s terrible. He’ll just wear the same.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah. OK!” Fucking hell, 5 hours later, he’s full of a bottle of rum, puking up everywhere! We’re going, “I don’t think we gotta worry about him having the same underpants on.” *laughs*
You think of things like that. (Drummer) Ged (Wolf) too, I found him…I mean, I didn’t find him. He was obviously there already, but I found him with Conrad, funny enough. I had come back from Canada. In the ’80s, I had gone back out there and spent some time with my sister. Atomkraft disbanded for a year. I came back to the UK and I had an Aria Urchin guitar. I thought, “I’m gonna put the band together, but I need a bass guitar.” I had no money, but I had this guitar.
So I went to Neat Records and I remember knocking on the door with this guitar. The door opened and it was Cronos. I went, “You alright mate?” “Yeah!” “Listen, you don’t know anybody who might want to swap this guitar for a bass guitar, do you? I just need a bass guitar.” He said, “What is it?” “It’s an Aria Urchin.” It was brand new, and he said, “Yeah, I’ve got a bass you can have!” He gave me his copy flying V that he drilled holes in and hammered nails into that he used at Hammersmith Odeon. A ripe old piece of shit! A noisy old piece of crap, but I didn’t care. He was laughing his cock off, thinking, “This mug’s just given me a brand new guitar.”, but for me, it was like, “I got a bass!” I didn’t have one. I didn’t have any money. Now I’ve got one.
He said, “Do you play in a band?” I said, “Yeah, Atomkraft, but I need a drummer.” He said, “I know a drummer! Our manager’s drummer is looking for a band. He just played an album with Tysondog.” He introduced me to Ged and that was it. Then, the guitarist lived down the corner from Abaddon! I said, “We auditioned several guitarists. It’s just not working. They’re just not the right kind of fit.” He said, “There’s this young lad who’s fucking amazing.” I went around to meet Rob. I just heard him play and went, “Yeah, that’s perfect.”
It was a progressive point, like “Future Warriors”, which I still love, but I love “Pour the Metal In”. “Heat and Pain” was like a KISS “I Love it Loud” kind of track. “Dead Mans Hand” is kind of like my “Ace of Spades”, if you like. Shamelessly “Ace of Spades” *laughs*! “Starchild” I love because like “Future Warriors”, it was inventive. We tried to push the boundary and do something new. I guess we had the speed element. We had the ugly element, but we were also trying to be progressive. We were the Future Warriors!
In retrospect, I think we were kind of behind the court by the time we got the album out as far as the speed thing went and extremity, so it looked like we were late to the race, but we were in front of the progressive side of the whole thing. So we were too early for one bit and it looked like we were too late for the next bit. We were right in that window. That’s what it is. When I look at the album, I’m really proud of what we did. I’m very proud of the band, that we recorded it and went out and played it live.
To do the album and then the same year, the first real show that we did was opening for Slayer at London’s Marquee when they were doing the Hell Awaits Tour. That can’t be that bad, can it? You make an album and you’re onstage with Slayer, who were at that time, still are, but even then, that album had just come out and they were my favorite band. It was like, “Wow, this is amazing.” When you look back, success is measured by yourself, not by other people. They go, “You’re not successful because you didn’t make a million dollars.” I go, “I didn’t want to make a million dollars. I never said I want to make a million dollars.” “Everybody wants to make a million dollars.” “Maybe they do, but that was not my intention.”
What I wanted to do was I wanted to make an album. I used to sit in my bedroom and think, “If I could make one record, I’d be happy for the rest of my life.” Of course, I’ve surpassed that, but that record was the one record I intended to make, and if I did that, I’d be happy. That’s why I’m so happy. I made the record, so as far as I’m concerned, the minute I finished that record and the record was out, I succeeded in my goal. Everything else is a bonus from there. Everything else is a bonus. I think you should do that with everything you challenge yourself to do.
I wanted to make one movie and I made more than one. I wanted to be on TV on a show and I did more than one. I would’ve loved to have done one Shakespeare play and I did a lot of Shakespeare. It’s that one thing. What’s that one thing you want to do? You can better it, but once you’ve done it once, you’ve reached your goals. Just hit your target. Don’t listen to people who say you can’t. Don’t think about your environment, because I had no money and no gear, and I played successfully in a band. I did demo recordings and wrote songs and played shows. I didn’t have any gear until 5 years in because I had no money, so I borrowed everything. Borrowing the stuff didn’t stop me. If it’s who you are, nothing will stop you. Nothing will stop you, so go for it.
What’s the current status of Atomkraft? I know you’ve been busy with Atomkraft, but is there any chance we could see the Future Warriors together again one more time?
DM: Yeah, there’s always offers. Every year there’s offers to do it. I just played the last festival of the season with Venom Inc. The guy who was doing the backline, Gary Young, who was the drummer with Avenger and a lot of other stuff as well, he said, “There was an offer from Germany to put me in touch with a guy who said, “Could you talk to Tony and get him to come and play Future Warriors?”” Every year there’s offers, and from South America all the time.
At the moment, the albums are just being re-released in Brazil, so they’re talking about some shows down there. It’s possible that if I do something with Venom Inc., I might do Atomkraft as one of the opening bands. I might double up just for the fun of it. If I can’t tour it in any other way, that’s how I might do it. I think I’m about two weeks away from completion of the new Atomkraft record. Those two weeks have taken me three years now to try and fit in. Every time I think, “Right, I’ll get to that.”, I’m too busy and I don’t get to it.
I’ve got the plans and I’ve recorded all the parts. Several times I’ve redone the work. By the end of Atomkraft in ’88, before I went to Venom, we were kind of moving towards thrash. I think we were just sounding like a typical thrash band. There was some progressive stuff in the recordings, but it just sounded a bit formatted. That was never what Atomkraft did. It wasn’t formatted. That was what I liked about it. You’ve got 50% of people going, “I love this.”, and 50% of people going, “I fucking hate this.”, but I like that. You knew you were doing something worthwhile if you were getting those kind of reactions.
I looked at it and thought, “Atomkraft was a three piece. It was set out as a three piece. It was modeled as a three piece.” We expanded it and we proved we could do that. I was playing rhythm guitar in the end, not even bass, and I wasn’t even singing. I thought, “Maybe I’ll reconvene this. I’m looking at it all wrong. I should go back to the roots and then feel the original sentiment of Atomkraft and not worry if people think it’s too dated or too old school, then it is, but who cares?” Motörhead was Motörhead. From the first time I saw them to the last time I saw them, they were Motörhead. If all I am is that, then there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s who I am.
If you think of the invention of a teabag, a teabag hasn’t changed since it was invented, but people still drink tea. Some people don’t like tea, but lots of people like tea. The actual thing hasn’t changed. It still produces tea. If I think about it like that, then don’t change it, so I went back, relooked at the stuff, rewrote some stuff, had some brand new stuff which was bass-heavy and written bass-wise. In the old days, I’d write most of it on the bass, and on an acoustic guitars I’d write the riffs on. I thought, “Just do that.” I got the acoustic guitar out, got the bass out, and that’s how I approached the writing. It just started to happen. I thought, “Oh my God! This is it! This is how I did it and it feels real now.”
We’ve got a heavy schedule for Venom Inc. in ’25. There’s so much stuff going on, but if I can grab some time, which I think I can now, I’ve been looking at the calendar, then I’m gonna finish that and then plug some shows in there somewhere, so I don’t have any downtime. At my age, time’s too important, isn’t it? There’s less in front of me than there is behind me, as an old friend used to say all the time. I should use the time well!
In closing, do you have any special messages for Venom’s legions who’ll be running wild for this tour next month?
DM: Well, I just want to say stay away from the politics. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. I read a thing the other day where some guy went, “Why do these motherfuckers just play these places that are too far away from where I live? Fuck ’em. They’re not real Venom anyways. Hands down, they’re not even real Venom. I don’t care, so I’m saving my money.” *laughs* OK, so just because we’re not playing in your backyard you fucking throw the bricks at us? I understand that you’re upset, but don’t worry! It’s only part 1!
Part 2, make a petition. Tell me where you live. Find a local promoter and we’ll come and fucking play your fridge if that makes you happy. I really don’t care. You don’t have to lose your hair grips over it. I just want to say thanks a lot. Stay away from the politics! It’s about music. It’s about you as a fan and it’s about the music. If your favorite song is “Cry Wolf” off At War with Satan, then tell me. If I can get them to play “Cry Wolf” for you, or you can sit there, only listen to it on record, just ignore me, and never hear them ever play it in your life, it’s up to you. I won’t destroy it. I’ll do it justice.
It’s about the music. It’s about you. It’s about the fans. I will play classics. I will play my period. I will play all the new stuff. I’ll give you everything that I could possibly give you. I will put 100% down, as will the boys. You will not see us phoning it in. It’s not just about us taking your money; it’s about being with you, experiencing it with you, supporting the music. That is who we are. It’s our responsibility to say to the next generation, “This is fucking who we are.”
At the end, as we close, I remind everybody, as you know because you were there in Chicago, “Remember who we are: We’re the Sons of fucking Satan.” That’s a moniker that’s someone stuck to us all, male, female, transgender, whatever it is, by the corporates. Then OK, that’s who we are. If that’s what you wanna call us, then that’s who we are, but we’re proud to be that. We’re a family, we’re a legion, and we’re proud to be who we are with all of our musical tastes, from death metal to grindcore to black metal. You name it, that’s who we are, but we’re all in it together.
Forget the politics, forget the shit. Don’t listen to any horseshit. Just come to the show and let yourself go. Give yourselves that freedom for a night. I hope to see you all out there. When I get to Chicago, don’t forget it’s the day before my birthday, so I’ll buy you a drink. If you come up and say, “Happy birthday!”, I’ll buy you a drink. If you don’t say that, you’re not getting anything, but if you do come up and say, “Hey, happy birthday!”, the drinks are on me.
Venom Inc. will be playing the WC Social Club in West Chicago, Illinois on Monday, January 20. Tickets can be purchased here. For more information on Venom Inc., visit www.venom-inc.co.uk.
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