Band:	Venom
Album:	Metal Black
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	March 2006
A review by:	jupitreas

01. Antechrist
02. Burn In Hell
03. House Of Pain
04. Death & Dying
05. Regé Satanas
06. Darkest Realm
07. A Good Day To Die
08. Assassin
09. Lucifer Rising
10. Blessed Dead
11. Hours Of Darkness
12. Sleep When I'm Dead
13. Maleficarvm
14. Metal Black

Venom's new release is bound to make old fans of the band quite happy; however, for the layman or merely curious, it will be a fairly mediocre and boring thrash album. Although the music here is very brutal and outright destructive, the repetitive songwriting makes it hard to enjoy for more that three or four songs at a time.

Those familiar with Venom's previous album Resurrection will feel right at home here. Although the lineup has changed yet again, the band still exploits the same musical ideas - Motorhead inspired thrash metal with production that reminds me of death metal. Indeed, Metal Black sounds as thundering as if it was Behemoth or Vader recording it, with great emphasis being given to crushing drum beats. Together with the heavy compositions, this gives extremely powerful results on such tracks as "Death And Dying", "Assasin" and "Sleep When I'm Dead". Unfortunately, unlike the previous release, on Metal Black there are no detours into other metal styles and the heavy artillery can get rather tedious after a while. In small doses it's very good but almost intolerable as a whole.

With all this said, Metal Black is still an acceptable release from these distinguished veterans. It could be much better but for old fans it will be a good enough excuse to wear those torn Venom t-shirts again and headbang like crazy.