So as a rock fan, and a heavy metal guy (i.e. think Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Dio, Pantera, Tool, Ghost, etc.) – I was interested to see how this one would play out… I’m guessing for 1982, it was probably pretty popular with a very select group of fans… You’ll note with most of the bands that I mentioned, you have fairly complex musical compositions – which are incredibly performed by amazing musicians… You could argue that Judas Priest is the most basic of that group, but I found Venom to be fairly average in terms of the quality of the compositions, as well as the playing… Also – creative lyrics about some of those dark topics can be appealing, but there’s not a ton of imagination here… Here’s a sample from “Raise The Dead” – which overall, was one of the better tracks on the album IMO, but lyrically – bit much to wrote home about… “…Rising from my deadly tomb I've got maddened eyes with fright fingers bleeding fast heart beating the moons my only light Ashes to ashes, dust to dust If God won't have me, then the Devil must…” But hey, if some extreme sub-genre takes it’s name from your album – then that’s gotta be worth something, so a solid 2 creating a little slice of goodness for a few people…