Well, the thruth is actually quite simple. The summer the record "Black metal" hit the norqegian marked, a friend of ours bought the record. He didn't like it himself, but gave us a copy because he thought we might find it interesting - given what we where thinking of with our own project. This was before Mayhem was established. We listened a lot to that album, and we where fascinated. Not only by the music, but mainly by the image and themes of the album.

It might be fair to asume that Venom was the seed for Mayhem as a image. They did something totally different, but we certainly had them as inspiration. And to manifest that we covered the song Black metal and wiching hour. Mayhem would have emerged without them, but probably under a different genre name. With Mayhem we took it much further, but the historical link is without question. Venom named the genre, without knowing I guess.

Now, is Venom worth while listening to? I say yes. For the ones that really want to explore the black metal genre, you should listen to Venoms album "black metal" and their album "at war with satan". They where two records we