Deep Purple

Deep Purple is presented as an influential predecessor in the musical lineage that led toward Venom and, indirectly, the later Black Metal scene. The book does not offer a history of Deep Purple itself; instead, it identifies the band as part of the older musical inheritance that Venom adapted, alongside a sharper and more confrontational style.

Place Among Venom’s Influences

Venom began in 1979–80 in Newcastle upon Tyne, formed by three Metal musicians who adopted the names Cronos, Mantas, and Abaddon. Their stated influences included Judas Priest, Deep Purple, Motörhead, and Black Sabbath, while Mantas was also a major KISS fan. Abaddon described the group’s approach as taking diabolical content from Black Sabbath, stage presence from KISS, and originality from Deep Purple. In this account, Deep Purple is not merely one name in a list: its influence is assigned a particular part in Venom’s effort to recombine elements of earlier bands into a sound and presentation of their own.

Adaptation and Musical Context

The book places Deep Purple within the older Heavy Metal and hard-rock framework that Venom inherited. Venom drew on that material but delivered it with a youthful, confrontational force shaped by the Punk explosion in England. Abaddon also traced the band’s influences across Deep Purple, the Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, describing a deliberately mixed ancestry rather than a single model. The resulting music remained fast Blues-based Rock, but its primitive aggression aligned it with an energy then more commonly associated with Punk. This contrast helps clarify Deep Purple’s role in the account: a source of musical ideas that Venom redirected, not a description of Deep Purple’s own sound or intentions.

Indirect Legacy

The book calls Venom the fathers of Black Metal worldwide, while describing Mayhem as occupying a comparable foundational position in Norway. Deep Purple’s relevance to that later history therefore runs through influence and adaptation: it is named among the older bands that informed Venom, whose combination of inherited Metal elements and raw aggression became part of the broader background to Black Metal. The evidence supports this mediated connection, but does not establish a direct relationship between Deep Purple and the Norwegian scene.