Conrad Lant, who the world knew as Cronos, has died at sixty three. Venom announced it on their own pages on 1 October and did not say why.
The band's statement put it plainly: for more than four decades his voice, bass and vision were at the heart of Venom, and from the first dark rumblings of Welcome to Hell through Black Metal, At War with Satan and Possessed he made something that changed heavy music. That is not a eulogy stretching a point. The second of those albums gave an entire genre its name, and the three men who made it were a Newcastle trio who could barely play and understood, before anyone else did, that this mattered less than what they sounded like.
His son Nathan wrote to the Legions, as Venom have always called their audience, to thank them for the support they gave his father over the years. He said Cronos had laid down his soul, and that his music will live on.
Venom formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1979. Into Oblivion, out in May on Noise, was their sixteenth album and their first new recordings since Storm the Gates in 2018, made by Cronos with the guitarist Rage and the drummer Dante. He was still working.