Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Like all good narratives and stories that belong in the realm of darkness, From the Very Depths, is a suggestion that plays into the heart of basic fears, frustrations, doubts and other worldly qualms and the thought of endings as we know them.
It is also the very real place that sees rock bottom being attained and yet for Venom, rock bottom is not an option, it may be a fine starting place for the uninitiated to smile with teeth dripping metal corroded blood but for Venom, this is the point where years of output of across different line-ups becomes important, depths have been reached but a zenith is in sight.
Arguably amongst the very best that the city of Newcastle has unleashed, the burning sulphur, the feeling of righteous despair and the unseen heralding a new era to mimic the world that album finds itself being released amongst, one in which social order and the fabric of a doomed society seems to be flowering huge discontent are all prevalent across the songs that make up From The Very Depths.
The quietness, the unnerving stillness that unleashes a demonic, banshee like opening in Eruptus is only the very beginning of a descent so well executed that the original Dante himself could well have nightmares if he were alive today.
Songs such as The Death of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Temptation, Stigmata Satanas, Crucified and the tour de force of Mephistopheles all crown off an album that sticks a stake through the heart of the unwarranted despair and offers a deep long look, a vision of harrowing desolation, of what the soul is capable of witnessing and the fight contained within.
There is no hope lost, this is Venom arguably at one of the very peaks of their studio career, an album which makes the lyrical malevolence seem justifiable and welcome, the malice of pent up rage coming over time and time again and it takes a strong heart to resist sliding down a pole in which will be impossible to resurface from without listening to more from this fine, yet somewhat under-appreciated band.
From the Very Depths sometimes comes hope; it just might surprise some to see Venom deliver the antidote to supposed waning interest in an art form that has always been of the highest quality in this country.
Ian D. Hall