VENOM INC., the band featuring original VENOM guitarist Jeff “Mantas” Dunn (guitar) and ex-VENOM bassist/vocalist Tony “Demolition Man” Dolan, is continuing to work on its new album. The follow-up to 2017’s “Avé” will once again be released on Nuclear Blast Records. The recording is being done between England, Portugal and America and it will have Dunn at the helm as producer once again.
In a new interview with the “Heavy Demons” radio show, Dunn stated about the making of the new VENOM INC. LP: “So far, we have 24 brand new songs, and they are all at the first preliminary mix stage. But we need to get the vocals done. Tony usually comes to Portugal to do vocals in my studio, but with all the restrictions at the moment [due to the coronavirus pandemic], it’s just not possible. So we’re just gonna have to wait.”
According to Dunn, the new VENOM INC. material is “sounding great. Dare I say this, it sounds better than ‘Avé’,” he said. “I think it does.”
Jeff went on to say that there is no release date yet for the new VENOM INC. disc. “It’s pointless saying to people, ‘Oh, yeah, it’ll be out in the spring,’ ‘Yeah, it’ll be out in the summer,'” he explained. “We just don’t know — we really don’t know. At the moment, the U.K. looks like it’s possibly locked down until March, so nobody’s going anywhere. And Portugal have shut their borders to a lot of countries, so getting in and out of places is just so difficult at the moment. So it may come down to Tony having to find a studio somewhere in London or whatever. I really don’t know.
“Like what we did with ‘Avé’, I had a lot of the lyrics written for that album already, and then when Tony came over, then any gaps that were there, we filled them in together,” he continued. “We tend to work on the vocals and the phrasing and all that kind of stuff together. So maybe it’ll just be down to Tony this time. I don’t know. We’ll have to see how the restriction situation goes. We’ll have to keep a close eye on it and see what happens.”
The new album marks the second recording under the name VENOM INC., while Dunn and Dolan have a long history as recording artists together in VENOM, M:PIRE OF EVIL and Mantas solo projects. It also marks the VENOM INC. recording debut of drummer Jeramie Kling (also of MASSACRE), who joined the band in 2018.
Back in 2018, VENOM INC. recruited Kling to fill in for drummer Anthony “Abaddon” Bray on a European tour while Abaddon stayed home to spend time with his newborn daughter. VENOM INC. has since completed several tours with Kling without making any official announcements about Bray‘s possible return to the group.
Dunn, Bray and Dolan released three albums as VENOM between 1989 and 1992 — “Prime Evil” (1989), “Temples Of Ice” (1991) and “The Waste Lands” (1992).
VENOM INC. is not to be confused with the Conrad “Cronos” Lant-fronted version of VENOM, which is continuing to tour and make albums under the VENOM moniker. Joining Cronos in that group are Rage (a.k.a. Stuart Dixon) on guitar and Danté (a.k.a. Danny Needham) on drums.
