Venom – ‘Assault!’ Box Set (Review)

Venom are a legendary metal band from the UK, and this is a compilation box set containing six out of print EPs that were released between 1985-1987 – Canadian Assault, American Assault, French Assault, Japanese Assault, German Assault, and Scandinavian Assault.

The songs in this collection have all been remastered from the vinyl originals and consist of a mix of studio and live tracks, as well as a dodgy interview.

Obviously, for any Venom completist this is an essential release, even more so if you weren’t able to hunt down any of the originals. For the more casual Venom fan this is still a very enjoyable collection of work, with many classic songs included.

The sound quality is essentially a digitised version of the old vinyl releases. For some people I’m sure this will be less than ideal, but it adds a certain nostalgic authenticity to the package, and it’s definitely not a hindrance to enjoying the material, for me at least.

The live tracks are the real gems here. Although these obviously vary in quality as you might expect, for the most part they’re actually quite high quality recordings and offer a real insight into the Venom live experience of the era.

Spread out over six CDs and with a total duration of two hours and 25 minutes, this is a shedload of Venom to get your teeth into. And do you know what? It tastes pretty damn good.

Find out more here.