Venom Prison: The Ones Born From Chaos

Wales’ premier death metal export VENOM PRISON have built their career on blistering, politically, and socially, charged works across their two albums to date, Animus and Samsara. Last year’s re-recording of their first EPs, Primeval, featured two brand new songs, teasing a new direction for the band. Ahead of the release of their hotly-anticipated third album Erebos, we sat down with guitarist Ash Gray on a cold December evening to talk about everything from Twitter beefs to how they reached into their past to create the future.

“There’s no-one else who could be more of a dick than myself to run it!” He laughs about their Twitter account, an outlet they’ve used not only for the usual promotional duties but also to engage with fans and the wider scene, often to irreverent and hilarious results. With the intense subject nature of the band’s material, he thinks it’s important that they lift the lid somewhat and show people that there’s still people behind the keyboard.

“I want to try and see if I can hire a flying man!” he jokes, referring to CREED’s infamous 2001 half time show that featured aerial acrobats; “I’m going to try and bully Scott and like, get him to beef VENOM PRISON at some point!” It’s clearly all in good humour, as alongside the serious side of them he thinks it’s important “people see the character and personalities behind the band a bit more. People will just build that perception of like, that’s all you are. And I think it almost invites those people who disagree with those opinions to be like, this band are so strict in their ways I’m going to try and get on their nerves and say some bad comments. And once hey see that personality, the jokeyness and all that, it’s like, fine. tweet at us. I’m not going to hesitate to tweet back because I find it hilarious, and I know other people do as well!”

For all the spirited remarks and humorous tweets, though, he does take their art and music seriously, and was worried about the reception first single Judges Of The Underworld might receive given the large shift in sound for them this time around. “The one thing I was very surprised about was the [reception to] the first single Judges…,” he remarks. “Once the reaction to it was kind of like, ‘oh, we dig this’ I’m like, okay so maybe the people who are interested in VENOM PRISON aren’t scared of this band changing the way we want it to. When we were about to release Judges Of The Underworld, I was sat there thinking, like, have I overshot this idea? I really pushed the boundaries on this one and thinking to myself, ‘oh lord, if I pushed the boundaries on this one then God help them when they get to single two’.”

That fear proved unfounded. Judges Of The Underworld is a groove-laden monster of a track with a huge hook in the form of vocalist Larissa Stupar’s barked “guilty as charged!” line. Quite opposite to that, second single Pain Of Oizys saw the band explore a much more melodic direction, one that did worry Ash and the band at first. But in a way, it’s something that he thinks no matter what people crying “that’s not metal!” from behind their keyboards online think, nothing could be further from the truth. “No one was ever saying shit about One or Nothing Else Matters,” he points out. “There’s no one that can say that it’s not metal, because when did those types of songs disappear? Nothing Else Matters is probably one of the biggest METALLICA songs ever. But like, nobody says that’s not metal.”

It’s something he’s passionate about, that VENOM PRISON have broken away from a lot of what could be considered typical of modern metal, such as replacing those songs “with a three minute beat down” and daring to do something different. And Erebos is different. Ash has remarked in the past that touring with other bands influences them a lot more than you might think, and that in turn has influenced the music they’ve written. Whereas this time, with an indeterminate stretch of time laid out in front of them, they could take their time, isolated from influences outside of themselves and each other, and write their own definitive statement of what it means to be VENOM PRISON in 2022.

“My attachment to Erebos is insane,” he begins; “in my head that’s exactly how I would want a VENOM PRISON album to sound, start to finish. I kind of felt like Animus was a way of letting people know what we could do, and we were that kind of violent, fast, energetic band. And I think Samsara was more to be kind of like, let’s see what happens when we get more technical.” But as soon as Samsara was finished, they knew they simply couldn’t write that album again; in many ways, it was back to the drawing board. They found the next steps in their past; Primeval, the re-recording of their initial demos. “It was something I wanted to do after Animus, but we never had the opportunity because of touring or recording another full-length,” he explains of why it was only now they did. Those initial EPs were just Ash and Larissa, and when the lineup was fleshed out more fully, it bugged Ash to not know what those songs would sound like with the lineup of today. “It was an excuse to revisit it,” he says, “[and] it was to figure out why people liked us in the first place when we first started, and it all just made sense, it was simplicity.”

That’s not to say Erebos is a simple album; far from it. But, in stripping back some of the more technical elements and focusing in on the songs themselves, it let them rediscover themselves, but it wasn’t easy. “I think we gathered something ridiculous like 20 or 30 songs, all demoed, and there was just something not quite right with a lot of them,” he explains. “I think the reason they weren’t quite right is because they just sounded like they could’ve been on Animus or Samsara.” Instead, they brought in new ideas; “we started bringing in a lot of synths, layers and electronics. And Larissa wanted to introduce all of these vocal layerings and harmonies.” This break from the old has paid off in spades; Erebos is, hands down, their finest hour and and Ash says, the most VENOM PRISON album to date.

Born of lockdowns, writing with enough time to craft precisely the album they wanted and needed to, it’s given them the fuel to keep pushing forward. “We’re starting to find our feet with the more creative side of ourselves. I think it’s because of how this album came out to be this album, was because we didn’t have to be rushed around doing things. I’d like more time just to keep that creativity going, because I feel like it’s putting this band in a good place, or a better place.” If that time leads to an album of Erebos’ quality, it’s hard to argue that it isn’t worth it.

Erebos is out now via Century Media Records.

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