Conrad Lant

Conrad Lant

Conrad Thomas Lant (aka Cronos), born in London, UK, in 15 january 1963, is a musician who is the vocalist and bass player of the influential black metal/speed metal band Venom, from 1979 to 1987 and from 1995 to this day.

Early life

After joining his high school band Dwarfstar, he joined Guillotine as a guitarist in 1978, where he met Jeffrey Dunn (aka Mantas). In 1980, the original bass player left one week before a gig. Instead of not playing the venue, Lant took up the bass and they changed the band name to Venom. He continued to play the bass throughout his career in Venom. In 1981, the band's vocalist Clive Archer left, leaving Lant to take over this role too.

Solo career

Lant left the band in 1989 to pursue a solo career and occasionally featured in many other bands of a similar genre, including Cronos, Enthroned, Cradle of Filth (Cronos contributed a monologue to the end of the Cradle track, Haunted Shores), Warpath, Massacre, and Necrodeath. He also produced some of the albums for other bands.

Venom tried to continue without Cronos but only managed a couple of releases before calling a halt on their efforts in around 1993 due to lack of sales and poor concert attendances. Cronos reformed the original Venom line-up in 1995 and headlined the Dynamo Festival in 1996 to a staggering 90,000 fans.

Recent developments

In 2000, the band went on to headline the Wacken Festival in Germany and play a one-off show in Holland before they were forced to take a break after Cronos was injured in a climbing accident in 2002, which left him unable to play bass or sing for a few years. He took to the computer to pass the time and studied games programming, learned 3D software skills and worked as the main multimedia engineer for the computer companies K-Class Systems and Globalfibre.tv.

Cronos again reformed Venom in around 2003 with his brother Antton on drums and recruiting Michael Alan Hickey. After the next couple of years of planning and intensive rehearsals, Venom released their latest album 'Metal Black' in early 2006 on the Sanctuary Group label Castle Music, and they embarked on a sold out world tour. Cronos also appeared on Dave Grohl's heavy metal side project Probot in 2004, and guest starred on the track Knights of the 21st century on HammerFall's 2005 album Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken.

Discography

with Venom

• Welcome To Hell (1981)
• Black Metal (1982)
• At War with Satan (1983)
• Possessed (1985)
• Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1986)
• Calm Before The Storm (1987)
• Cast In Stone (1997)
• Resurrection (2000)
• Metal Black (2006)

with Cronos

• Dancing in the Fire (1990)
• Rock n' Roll Disease (1991)
• Venom (1995)

other appearances

• Dusk... and Her Embrace by Cradle of Filth (1996) - spoken word on "Haunted Shores"
• Probot by Probot (2004) - vocals and bass on "Centuries of Sin"
• Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken by HammerFall (2005) - vocals on "Knights of the 21st Century"