No one could terrify like Cronos, the black metal innovator who reignited rock’s hellraising attitude

‘I’m in league with Satan!’ … Cronos pictured in 1985. Photograph: Fin Costello/Redferns

When Venom’s first blasts of ungodly racket emanated from Newcastle upon Tyne in the late 1970s, metal was enduring its awkward adolescence. Black Sabbath and Deep Purple had respectively slipped down the charts and broken up, and young guns Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were years away from reaching their commercial heights. Frontman Conrad “Cronos” Lant decided that the genre had become “lame”.

“There could only be one new way to do this,” he recalled to Guitar World in 2008. “For metal bands to get some fucking balls again.”