'Lay Down Your Soul to the Gods of Rock and Roll'

More chitter-chat about endearingly objectionable bands, although you’ll get no disclaimer this time. If you are offended by Venom (especially this late in the day), you invariably deserve to be, and you probably had a hard time wrapping your head around the subtle nuances of “This is Spinal Tap.” In terms of writing about Venom, however, I really wrung the topic dry back on this post from 2009 (with a slight return in this post). There really isn’t that much more I can say about this endearingly ludicrous band, other than that they’ll always firmly occupy a place in my heart.

In any case, in doing a Google image search recently (I was looking for variations of the old “Home Taping is Killing Music” logo … a quaint little alarmist campaign the music industry tried to laughably foist upon consumers decades ago), I stumbled upon the t-shirt design below, and the all-consuming coveting started in earnest. These apparently came out in 1983. Where the hell was I? Regardless, my birthday is in October, and I wear a size "large." Just sayin'.

INFERNAL ADDENDUM: My comrade Piers sagely pointed out that I misquote Venom's signature anthem, "Black Metal,"in my headline, the correct lyric being: "Lay Down Your Soul to the Gods Rock N' Roll." There is no "of." All this time, I thought Cronos was just frantically slurring through it in hellbound haste. Color me embarassed and ashamed. 

And if you’re still unfamiliar with Venom, here they are circa during their Hell-hailing heyday.