Warthur The last album before Venom's first of many lineup changes is another strong proto-thrash effort from the band. Both the production values and the band's technical chops have progressed since the preceding At War With Satan, but rather than continue that album's flirtations with extended prog rock song structures they deliver a competent collection of shorter tracks.

Though many Venom fans don't consider it to be in the same league as the preceding three albums, I have to say I quite enjoy it, and certainly prefer it to Black Metal; in particular, the band finally seem to be paying as much attention to their musicianship as they did to their shock value, and the result is the most listenable album of their early repertoire. At the same time, that very listenability reveals the very gaps in their musicianship and compositional abilities that their brilliant early aesthetic covered up, so it's decidedly a mixed blessing.

Ultimately, I suspect that nothing Venom have released or will ever release will quite match the originality of Welcome to Hell - even the much-vaunted Black Metal is basically a rehash of that - and this album demonstrates that the original lineup had more or less run out of juice by the end of their original run.