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Much digital ink has been spilled over the first Combat Tour Live: The Ultimate Revenge. The VHS release documented a stop of the Venom, Slayer, and Exodus package put together by Combat Records. I mean, for good reason: check out that lineup. As most of it was shot on April 3, 1985, you have the last gasps of the “classic” iteration of Venom (kind of, more on this in a second), Slayer a day after Hell Awaits dropped, and Exodus a couple weeks before Bonded by Blood hit the streets running like a piranha. Not bad. If a Nocturnus device plopped you here, you could do a lot worse. Plus, the setting was somewhat notable: Studio 54 in New York. Indeed, heshers invading the den of disco. Almost six years after Disco Demolition Night, Staying Alive posters set alight were still something of a rallying cry for rocker-centric video producers. Point: Imagine meme-time moving that slowly now. Counterpoint: It being the ’80s, no one socked the Hitler-salute idiot in the jaw.
Anyway, this isn’t the Ultimate Revenge VHS I want to talk about. Again, you can read about it elsewhere. So, aside from Slayer and Exodus’s legit smoking sets, let’s zoom through the four most interesting things about it:
Venom’s two songs are actually pulled from two different previously released videos
There are two grain-of-salt possibilities for this:
- Guitarist Mantas came down with “chicken pox” and couldn’t make the early leg of the tour. Two guitarists filled in: Davey Irwin (Fist) and Les Cheetham (Avenger). But isn’t early Venom a trio? you’re thinking. Cronos, to J. Bennett at Vice: “The thing was, because Mantas decided to get sick only days before we were supposed to fly out, it was a bit difficult to get a guitarist in to learn the entire set because it was like an hour and a half or two hours long. So that’s why we got the two guys in — we learned each guy half the set. It was easier to do it that way rather than plant the whole damn show on one guy’s head.”
The reason I put Mantas’s affliction in scare quotes is because, per Cronos, the guitarist seemed to be pretty checked out by this point, suffering from senioritis if anything. Here’s Cronos blabbing to Guitar World about the recording sessions for Possessed, the dud of an album that Venom was touring behind: “Unrehearsed bollocks was what that album was. It was around the time that Mantas was just, like, staring at the wall — his heart wasn’t in it anymore. He wasn’t even talking — he was just lost, his mind was on other things. And when he didn’t show up for rehearsals, me and Abaddon had to rehearse all the songs alone. When it came time to record, I just felt that the songs were so stale. None of the songs had found the right speed or integrity or intensity. That’s one of the reasons why I rehearse my stuff — because a song needs to find itself.”
If you buy the above, I think the idea was to sub in footage from Live E.P. and The 7th Date of Hell – Live at Hammersmith Odeon in order to showcase a fully functioning Venom instead of two hired guns who might not be around when the band hit the road again. Abaddon said as much in an interview with Decibel: “Because Jeff wasn’t on the tour, we didn’t want a video going out without him on it, so me and Cronos did an interview and we gave them two tracks with Jeff on.” This hinges on the idea that an ’80s metal band was concerned with continuity, so yeah. However, this bears out somewhat as Hell at Hammersmith, shot in October 1985, does feature Mantas. He’d be gone the following year, though. - Per Cronos, there was a dispute with the video producers. Again, to Vice:
The Venom footage is actually from the UK. The only thing of Venom on the Ultimate Revenge video that came from Studio 54 was the interview and the [pyro] explosion. And the reason for that is because the guys who came down to shoot the show were supposed to pay the management because they were gonna release the VHS video. As you know, this is called the music business. And they refused to pay. They tried to say, “We’ll pay you after the show.” [Laughs] But we’re from England. We don’t fall for that one. We sent everyone who talks like that to Australia many years ago — on a boat. But they didn’t think we’d be able to stop them, so we took the ax from next to the fire extinguisher and just chopped all their cables. So they recorded Exodus and Slayer, but all they got of Venom was the bang. Later on, Neat Records sold them a couple of songs from the show from England. [Laughs] Venom don’t like getting ripped off. Whether Exodus or Slayer got paid, I’ve no idea. But I very much doubt it. It was a shame that the video doesn’t have Venom footage from Studio 54. We weren’t asking that much — they would’ve made ten times that off the video sales. So it was just greed.
A short, faux-oral history of tour shenanigans
Pissgate:
Cronos: I was sitting in the back of the bus, and [Tom Araya] came back there with his dick out. When I turned around and looked, there were some wet bits in me hair. I thought he trickled some piss into me hair, so I just stood up and knocked him out. Where I come from, you don’t piss on people, you know? [Laughs] But we shook hands afterwards, and it was not a problem.
Dave Lombardo: Jeff and I and a bunch of fans were just hanging out, and we were sharing the Hell Awaits album, playing it in the back of the bus. We were all drinking; we were hammered. I think maybe Abaddon was there. Cronos was in the back of the bus. Then Tom stumbles in; it was our first time on a tour bus. Tom comes in, fucking punch-drunk, he was just fucking gone. He says, “Where’s the fucking bathroom in this thing?” Cronos, being Cronos, just says “Right here. Just piss right here.” So Tom pulled out his dick, and pissed on Cronos (laughs). We’re like, “Oh, shit!” Cronos gets up and just grabs Tom, I think his pants were still down, and punches Tom in the face (laughs). They get in a scuffle, they were drunk and just hanging out in the front of the bus; the fight broke up and they were trying to mend the argument. They were just going back and forth with each other, you know how drunk people do. So Tom has a black eye and they’re sitting in the front of the bus, and it was locked, I couldn’t get to the bathroom, I’m banging on the door and I’m hearing them arguing, and I’m banging on the door and I said, “Open the door! I gotta use the bathroom! I’m gonna puke!” And I hear the conversation stop and Tom says, “You better open the door, he’s gonna puke.” Sure enough, I went into the bathroom and did my thing, and Cronos and Tom were sitting there next to each other all upset (laughs), Tom with a black eye. He had to do the tour with a shiner.
Abaddon: He didn’t piss on him, but he did stick his dick on Cronos’ shoulder (laughs). Cronos jumped up and nutted him in the face; Tom’s nose exploded, of course it was left to me to pull a raging Cronos off Tom and calm everything down, a job I got to do more and more.
On playing Studio 54:
Lombardo: Playing Studio 54 was a real treat; I had heard about that club and the whole Saturday Night Fever disco era, so for the band to play that club was pretty damn cool. For it to be Venom, Slayer, and Exodus, that was definitely the end of the disco era and the beginning of the thrash metal era. That was amazing, I remember backstage at the club there was some fool back there, I guess he was the last remaining disco fan or something, he was hanging out with two chicks, he was probably 5’1”, and the only reason those two chicks were with him was because he had a bag of blow, but that bag of blow ended up being powdered sugar or something (laughs).
Quotes have been pilfered from linked sources and condensed for clarity.
This Combat Records ad that closes the video is gold
Maj. Mayhem hocking Tokyo Blade and TKO as experts in “administering violence with taste.” Man, that TKO cover is, uh, something, right? Taste! Sure!
Venom gave Exodus a good nickname
“We used to call them ‘Exo-dugga-dugga-dugga-dus’ because that’s what all their songs did,” Cronos said to Vice. “We went out with them in Europe after that. We just wanted to embrace all things metal, and all the bands that came out of that. You had the likes of Death down in Florida with Chuck Schuldiner and Testament was coming out of the Bay Area. Then there was that whole wave of European stuff. We thought it was great.”
Ah, Death. Thanks for the segue, Cronos. I really want to talk about this Ultimate Revenge tape:
On October 23, 1988, the Dark Angel/Death tour hit Philadelphia’s Trocadero Theater for, what I’m guessing, was an expanded festival bill that added locals Faith or Fear, California’s Forbidden, and…Raven? Yeah, late-’80s Raven is on this.
Fewer 1s and 0s have been spilled about this tour for reasons I can’t really explain, especially considering that Morbid Saint opened select dates. That must’ve been a goddamn show.
The one quote of note is from Gene Hoglan that shows up in Andrew Hoxter’s review of VHS. This was originally printed in the March 2011 issue of Decibel:
“We had done the Ultimate Revenge II tour. That didn’t work out too well for anyone. Dark Angel and Death didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things. It got heated and Death walked off the tour. When Borivoj Krgin called me in September or October 1992 and said “Hey man, Chuck is looking for a drummer. Are you interested?” I was like, “Well, that’s weird. I thought we were enemies?” So, Borivoj game me Chuck’s number and bygones were bygones. Early December is when I went out to rehearse for Individual Thought Patterns. After about three weeks, we cut the record.
– Gene Hoglan, Decibel Magazine, March 2011
This is not a test of power. Anyway. Whatever. This video rules. Unlike the previous edition, this one contains little bullshit. No interviews or, uh, D-grade Heavy Metal Parking Lot crowd shots. It’s just bands ripping it up. The worst thing is that the sets have been chopped down to four songs.
Whoever mixed this really crushed it. Forbidden’s four sound heavier and harder than the versions on Forbidden Evil. Death, with a lineup halfway between Leprosy and Spiritual Healing, suffers from some tone/tightness issues, but sounds similarly heavified. The winners of this battle royale, though, are goddamn Dark Angel.
You have to feel bad for Raven. While I like Raven just fine, this wasn’t the…best…fest for them to be on at the time. Death metal, turbo thrash, Raven. While this kind of lineup would work at a nowadays festival thanks to metal’s boundless enthusiasm for its own nostalgia, that shit wasn’t flying in 1988. To wit: “Also, when Raven played everyone left,” YouTube user Eric Sand remembers, “They literally played to about 20 kids. I [remember] they were panning in tighter around raven on the monitors to show that [no one] left.”
One last thing, check out this period live review that appeared in Metal Forces Magazine. A couple things:
Did Ron Rinehart cut all of his shirts like this?
Dude even proto-Etsy’d his own merch. Good work, Ron. Airing out that metalhead side-manboob.
And then, this:
Ah, yes! Death and Dark Angel, two of my favourite “bunch of pals” together on a New York stage for the first time since my “controversial” review of the Ultimate Revenge II gig in Philadelphia last October.
Borivoj Krgin, http://www.metalforcesmagazine.com/site/live-review-dark-angel-31-03-89/
So did I get beat up? Did I suffer through extreme physical pain or a verbal slashing at the hands of Mr’s Chuck Schuldiner and Jim Durkin? The answer is: none of the above. In fact, aside from a brief derogatory mention given to yours truly on the part of Mr. Schuldiner during Death’s set, the night was surprisingly friction free, with most of Death and all of Dark Angel not even giving a flying fuck about the fact that I was there (albeit, admittedly, Jim Durkin wasn’t even present at the gig – but more on that later!).
The heck? So, Krgin earns a “fuck you” during this show and then he’s recruiting Hoglan for Individual Thought Patterns three years later?
Krgin, as you might know, founded Blabbermouth in 2000. So, makes sense that he’d have the news item, especially as he was known as one of the…”three Musketeers of the New York underground metal scene.” (His old Violent Noize zine is worth a look if you can find scans.) Krgin also talked with Chuck a lot, so there’s that. And, yeah, there’s this intro from Metal Forces #47:
As many readers may know, the last time I wrote anything relatively extensive about the band DEATH in the pages of this magazine, it was a piece that was largely personal and bordering on slander (although not quite) even if it was what I truly felt at the time. In the months following the publication of that particular article, a lot of things were said back and forth between Chuck Schuldiner and myself which were less than complimentary, with Chuck going even so far as to send out a special “fuck off and die” message to yours truly at the band’s last NY performance last March. Of course, this was pretty childish behaviour on both our parts which is why it came as no surprise to me that, as time went by, we both eventually decided to put the whole matter in the back of our minds and start speaking to each other again.
Borivoj Krgin, https://www.emptywords.org/MetalForcesissue47-02-1990.htm
Still! It’s not like I’m out here headhunting for Deafheaven, or anything. Different times. Back when metal writers were somebody. Saddest awooo.
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THE ALGORITHM IS HUNGRY AND IT IS HUNGRY FOR CATS.
Two hour-long video essays hit the Tube within the last month. Both are good.
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A bonus! Two of the OSW Review guys guested on Baywatching, a video review show that dissects old Baywatch episodes. They unpack WCW’s Bash at the Beach crossover event.
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Double bonus! This essay by Folding Ideas is still the best thing I’ve watched about the current times we find ourselves in. I’ve thought about it so much, it feels like I watched it eight years ago.
– Wolf Rambatz
Plague Rages 