Sick of the Smack

Like any other fans of Venom we have had to make peace with the fact that the members of the classic line up, how shall I put this..... don't exactly love each other. In fact they out and out dislike each other. Now, when you get strong, opinionated and sometimes volatile personalities at close working quarters that, unfortunately, is often the case. In that situation people just have to cut their losses, part ways and get on with their lives and careers. That's what Venom did, on several occasions, the last occasion being in 2000 when Cronos and Mantas finally parted ways. So why is there still drama being dragged up in 2016?
The issue of a name that should never have existed in the first place, that's why. The issue that is, not the name.
Some promoter manages to arrange it so that Mantas and Abaddon are reunited in a band (something Mantas states he never saw himself doing and a decision which he seems to have had to really think about) along with Tony 'Demolition Man' Dolan. The trio wanted to name themselves Iron and Steel. Nothing wrong there! This whole thing would have been fine and well and a whole load of drama would have been avoided but the promoter had a different name in mind. Venom Inc. And there in lies the whole problem.
That was an incendiary move. My guess is the promoter may have been very aware of that. After all being provocative stirs people up and gets them talking. I myself can think of far better ways of gaining attention than trying to start a public bitch fight. As fans we're sick of the back biting.
Done right this could have been exactly what Tony Dolan (as often as not the voice of reason in the Venom Inc camp) says it is. A good thing... the best of both worlds. Not one band to take sides with, but two bands to enjoy.
Unfortunately, that's hard to do when bad blood is being spilled over nearly every interview we've seen or read.
In 2005 Cronos got in touch with Mantas and asked permission to carry on as Venom. If you get permission to carry on as a band that involves use of the name and logo. They are integrally part of the band. We've heard Mantas' explanation of what was going on in his life at the time and we sympathise with that. Maybe he wasn't thinking straight at the time, but that was ten years before the Venom Inc debacle arose. There was ten years for him to approach Cronos and state that he had made a mistake and rethought his decision. By the time issues around the name arose Venom had been carrying on and produced four new albums. At this point I'd also like to ask why the decision about the name rests with Jeff... wasn't it a roadie who came up with the name, if we're going to get really petty about it.
As for the logo.... ok, Abaddon designed it. For the band. He has spent a lot of time out of the band with the logo still being used. Why drag it up now? Why not do that way back?
Now to the question of why we are dragging this out now. Like I said before, we're kind of sick of the devisive atmosphere being created around these two bands. The bitching, the bad blood. Recently Zero Tolerance was bought (due to a cover featuring Abbath!) only for our reading pleasure to be marred by yet another episode of back biting in interview form courtesy of Jeff Dunn. It wasn't even anything new. It was the same stuff pedalled in as many Venom Inc interviews. When is this going to stop?
Instead of having two bands to enjoy the bitching has made us feel we have to take a side and we're siding with Venom. Cronos' Venom. The band that has been going for years. The one with the most stable line up to date. Abaddon called Venom a cover band; well as far as we understand cover bands don't write new material, put out new albums and perform new material in their set. (If you're going to talk smack, try to make sure that smack makes sense!)
This is a sad situation; all the sadder because this isn't a bunch of young, hot-headed boys we're talking about. These are men in their fifties who, by this time, should know how to settle their differences without making it a public drama.

~ Luna ~