VENOM co-founders Jeff "Mantas" Dunn and Anthony "Abaddon" Bray staged a star-studded celebration of the band's roots on June 23, 2026, marking the 45th anniversary of the genre-defining debut "Welcome To Hell" at Parksnäckan in Uppsala, Sweden.
Performing under the banner "Mantas and Abaddon," the pair pulled in a who's-who of extreme metal as special guests. The night featured Adam "Nergal" Darski of BEHEMOTH, David Vincent of MORBID ANGEL and TERRORIZER, Erik Danielsson of WATAIN, Lord Ahriman of DARK FUNERAL, Sakis Tolis of ROTTING CHRIST, Diva Satanica (BLOODHUNTER, ex-NERVOSA) and Blake "Bulldözer" Arendell of INTERCEPTOR — a lineup that reads like a family tree of the black and death metal scenes VENOM helped spawn.
Released in 1981, "Welcome To Hell" is routinely cited as one of the most important records in extreme metal history, its raw, chaotic sound laying the groundwork for black metal, thrash and death metal alike. "[VENOM] has had so much influence on the metal scene," Mantas told the crowd, noting wryly that "this stupid fucking band has missed every major anniversary" — a wrong this concert set out to correct.
The performance also nodded to the long-running dispute over the VENOM name. "Unless you've got two members of that three-piece, you can't call it VENOM, because it's Cronos and some other blokes," Abaddon said, explaining why the show ran under the founders' own names rather than the VENOM banner.
Fan-filmed footage of the concert, captured by Nalle Österman for Riepu.fi, has since surfaced online, offering a glimpse of a one-off summit that doubled as a history lesson in the origins of extreme metal.