VENOM INC. Completes Mixing New Mini-Album

In a new interview with Laughing Monkey With Shawn Ratches, VENOM INC. bassist/vocalist Tony "Demolition Man" Dolan and guitarist Curran Murphy spoke about plans for the band to release a follow-up to its second album, "There's Only Black", which came out in 2022. Curran said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We finished mixes on the new VENOM INC., the new mini-LP, a couple of weeks ago. We finally got all that locked in. It's getting mastered right now."

Regarding why VENOM INC. chose to release a mini-LP as opposed to a full-length album, Tony said: "I think we've still got a way to go by the time we do the full album. This is kind of an introduction, if you like. There's a bunch of tracks on there, so it's kind of a mini-album — six or seven tracks."

He continued: "We've got BLACK LABEL SOCIETY tour and a European tour around that coming up, and I wanted to have some new stuff out, new stuff ready anyway. And I think we kind of lost our window because we didn't wanna rush it, so it took a little bit longer than I'd hoped for. But we wanted to continue, so we could put some fresh stuff in the set. A couple of the songs are older classic songs that fans wanted to hear that we haven't played live, in one case. And another one, which was a song from 'The Waste Lands' that we put into the set which people loved. And so it's been re-edited, if you like, and redone our way. And so I wanted to include that. We've got a tribute song on there, and we've got some new stuff on there. So it seemed to bridge the gap of our identity. I wanted to [release] something to [establish] our identity. We've also got a finished product, which is the Kiss FM studio sessions we did in Brazil, in São Paulo, which is now ready to go as well. And then there'll be the full live album and then the new album. So we just wanted to get material out and just go, 'This is who the band is. This is our identity.' It's VENOM INC., not VENOM, and we wanted to make that distinction. [The Conrad 'Cronos' Lant-fronted-fronted] VENOM's just released their next record, 'Into Oblivion' I think it's called, and that sounds great, so that's them…. It's them. It's Conrad and the boys, and it sounds like them. And they've been together 17 years doing their albums, and they're happy doing that. But I thought it's time to make the distinction between who we are and who they are, 'cause people go, 'Oh, that's not VENOM.' It's, like, nobody said it was VENOM."

Addressing criticism from some VENOM fans who object to VENOM INC. performing so much of the classic VENOM material which was recorded by the band's original lineup, Tony said:  "We're playing legacy stuff, but it's legacy stuff I was involved in. And when you're in a live situation, if somebody comes to a show, and they're doing a meet-and-greet, or they just talk to you, and they have a song, which was a classic VENOM song that meant the world to them, and you're in front of them, and they're begging you to play it, 'Please play that song for me,' and we can, then I don't see there's a problem with that. They know who we are. They know we're not [VENOM]."

Dolan continued: "When we play live, we have to fill in forms of the songs we play live and who wrote the songs, so [the original VENOM members] get paid, so they can sit on their thrones and laugh at us if they want because we're making them money. I don't really give a shit whether they make two bucks off a song we played that's theirs, if the fans are asking for it. But, of course, transitionally, the idea is to make that distinction between them, what they do, and us. And that's the distinction we're making. And this was an opportunity to do exactly that. So we're embracing who we are.

"We could play two hours every night and not touch anything that was [recorded] before 1989," Tony explained. "Great. I'm quite happy with that. I don't live in 1981. I don't wanna still be in that place. And we've got something to say, something to do, and we've got new music we wanna create. And so that's our distinction. So, now we can move forward freely and do it the way we wanna do it. But nobody sitting in any sort of padded cell somewhere is gonna dictate what we fucking play and what we don't fucking play. That's up to us and the fans who are in front of us, not up to somebody somewhere else. They can do what they wanna do. I don't really give a shit. But there is a distinction. There is a VENOM. It's there. It's alive. It's just brought a new album out, and it will be doing shows. So there you go. So, [when people say], 'Well, you're not VENOM,' it's, like, I know. I never said I was. I was in VENOM, but we're not VENOM. We're VENOM INCORPORATED. The whole idea — we incorporate every bit of music that we've done."

VENOM INC.'s current lineup consists of Dolan and Murphy alongside drummer Marc Jackson.

In December 2024, it was announced that former NEVERMORE and ANNIHILATOR guitarist Curran Murphy had officially joined VENOM INC. as the replacement for the band's founding guitarist Jeff "Mantas" Dunn. The news of Murphy's addition to VENOM INC. came less than a month after Mantas announced that he was leaving the band in order to focus on his "health and well-being" after suffering two heart attacks in the space of four years, as well as to care for his wife, who was battling cancer.

There are now three different bands using variations of the VENOM name for their live shows. In addition to the new collaboration between Dunn and Anthony "Abaddon" Bray, VENOM's iconic co-founders — who recently announced that they will celebrate the 45th anniversary of VENOM's classic debut album, 1981's "Welcome To Hell", at various festivals in 2026, including Germany's Keep It True — there is the Conrad "Cronos" Lant-fronted version of VENOM, in which he is the sole remaining member from the band's classic era, and there is VENOM INC., which is led by Dolan, who was a member of VENOM between 1989 and 1992, appearing on the albums "Prime Evil" (1989),"Temples Of Ice" (1991) and "The Waste Lands" (1992).

In June 2024, Cronos filed a lawsuit against Abaddon and Plastic Head Music Distribution Ltd in which he accused the distributor of selling merchandise with Lant's copyrighted VENOM designs and Bray of approving the infringement through a licensing agreement. The dispute revolved around the fact that both parties were licensing and selling official VENOM merchandise featuring the contested designs.

According to Law360.com, Lant testified in court last year that he joined VENOM in late 1979 and came up with the Satanic-themed designs used in the band's logo and album covers, which included goat heads, pentagrams and inverted crosses. Bray filed a counterclaim for infringement against Lant and Lant's distributor, Razmataz.com Ltd., arguing that Bray was the real author of the works. Because Lant was able to produce numerous sketches which demonstrated his design process and Bray was unable to do the same, Bray was deemed the owner of the original logo, while Lant was found to be the creator and copyright owner of all but one of the other artistic works in dispute.

VENOM's classic lineup trio of Dunn, Lant and Bray recorded four studio LPs, "Welcome To Hell" (1981),"Black Metal" (1982),"At War With Satan" (1984) and "Possessed" (1985),and live album, "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (1986). Often cited by bands such as METALLICA, BEHEMOTH, CELTIC FROST and MAYHEM as major influences, they are one of the most revered bands of their generation.

Image credit: Hadesmetal