Welcome to Hell
| Welcome to Hell | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Venom | ||||
| Released | December 1981 | |||
| Recorded | August 1981 | |||
| Studio | Impulse Studios in Newcastle, England | |||
| Genre | Speed metal | |||
| Length | 39:26 | |||
| Label | Neat | |||
| Producer | Keith Nichol and Venom | |||
| Venom chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal | 6/10 |
| Sounds | |
Welcome to Hell is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Venom. It was released in December 1981, through Neat Records, at the culmination of the new wave of British heavy metal movement. The music of Welcome to Hell is often described as speed metal, but it had a great influence on the then-emerging thrash metal style, and crystallised the elements of what later became known as death metal and black metal.
The sound of the album is very noisy and rough, perhaps in part because the band thought they were recording a demo when they recorded the album over a period of only three days. According to author Dayal Patterson, Welcome to Hell might be the first black metal album.
The album was re-issued in 1998 by Combat Records and was re-released by Sanctuary Records in 2002.
British journalist Geoff Barton stated in his 1981 five-star review of Welcome to Hell that the album had "the hi-fi dynamics of a 50-year-old pizza", and that it "brought a new meaning to the word 'cataclysmic'". According to AllMusic's journalist Eduardo Rivadavia, highlights of the album include "Welcome to Hell", "In League with Satan", "One Thousand Days in Sodom" and "Witching Hour"; Rivadavia said of "Witching Hour": "Possibly Venom's single most important track, in it you'll hear a number of stylistic devices which would later pervade all extreme metal genres, indeed become their most regularly abused clichés." Canadian journalist Martin Popoff wrote that "Welcome to Hell got a certain fabulously stupid impetus to it, despite the sub-bootleg quality recording, and Cronos quickly establishing himself as the most annoying voice in rock"; it should be considered "a record of historical metal relevance", but "not the band's most listenable product".
All tracks written by Bray/Dunn/Lant.
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