Hi Tony, thank you for taking the time for a couple of question. With the Avé album (2017) as the band’s first release, when and how did you set out the plans for the follow up we now know as ‘There’s Only Black’?
Following our end of season show at WACKEN, I was due my hip operation so decided while I was enjoying the recovery period over Christmas 2019 and into 2020 myself and Mantas could spend time in Portugal at his studio writing and completing some new music, possibly release early 2020 then go back on the road. However the pandemic halted plans for travel, so we each completed writing at our home bases, while awaiting a green light to travel. But that never came, so we changed track. I didn’t think we should rush, seeing as we wouldn’t be able to produce physical material easily and certainly not tour until the disease had subsided, or governments had gained control of it anyways. So we shared files, ideas and produced around 24 tracks by the time we were ready to compile the album, which brought us all the way to 2022.

The title track refers to Jeff ‘Mantas’ Dunn’s heart attack, back in 2018, where he got a glimpse of nothing at all on the other side. Can you relate to that? Is there something around that dark corner?
Well, the original title was ‘Nine’ based on Dante’s Inferno, one’s journey from birth to death and those challenges we meet along the way. But then, while working in the studio, Mantas dropped me a track he’d completed and said it was about his death experience, where he had seen no light, no angels, no golden gates or burning fires, only a vortex of black and I asked what it was titled. He said, ‘There’s Only Black’…and it just hit me like a brick and the images, ideas and meaning bounced around my head immediately and I said: “that’s it, that’s the title!”.
It had so many far reaching meanings, of course Jeff’s own ultimate experience, but beyond that, it raises that very human question, “what’s it all about? Why are we here? What’s next? What is beyond what we know?” etcetera. So I changed the cover and it also fit the theme of the whole album. I even chose not to use our famous logo on the cover, but took a font I saw on a gravestone in a famous London cemetery, because it just fit the whole theme.

The addition of Jeramie “War Machine” Kling to the band was a direct match, as the gigs with him proved from the very start. How did that influence the music of Venom Inc?
Hugely! But only in a way that we both felt free to create anything and Jeramie would do what he does so superbly in performance. The restrictions and limitations that we had, applied to us on the previous album were lifted and so we felt stronger.

As you three are living far away from each other (England, Portugal and USA), how did you make plans for the album? Songwriting recording and producing must have been something else, given the Covid-19 circumstances I guess.
The initial plans after Wacken were to have my hip replaced and while in recovery go to Portugal and work on new songs. That fell apart with the whole Covid thing, so as it became clear, travel wasn’t going to be an option. We just got on with writing in our own locations, using the internet for meeting, chats, playthrough ideas etcetera. It really was invaluable as a tool to help. So the distance was reduced to nothing and as we all have studio access, it made it even easier. We shared an idea immediately and respond in kind also as if we were all in the same room.