I didn’t find out until today, but one of my all-time metal heroes died yesterday – Conrad “Cronos” Lant, bassist and singer of archetypal black/thrash metal band Venom. My username on many sites is either cronos or cronos42, I wrote dozens of stories with a spiritual child called Cronos Warchild¹I started using the ‘Warchild’ name 5 years before the Warchild organisation came to be, and my nickname in the 80s/90s computer scene was Cronos. I met (and interviewed) him in 1996, and saw him perform with Venom that year, and a year before, and one final time in 2017. I was much impressed by him, and until James Hetfield came along I thought he was the coolest dude ever.

I feel too gutted and uninspired to write much more here, other than to observe that it might have been much cooler had he died 2 days earlier (on International Blasphemy Day), and that the Horned Lord from Downstairs will now probably be drinking a glass of virgin’s blood with him. Hell yeah.

Here‘s a tribute that is better than mine, which I wish I would have written (thanks to Rich “Felice” Spowart for telling me about it).
And here‘s the video that solidified Venom in my mind as one of the awesomest bands on the planet.