KISS

KISS appears in the book as an influence on Venom, chiefly through guitarist Mantas’s enthusiasm for the band and its stage presence. The account does not develop KISS’s own history; it traces instead how one element of its performance became part of another band’s deliberately assembled identity.

Evidence and Context

Venom’s members—Cronos, Mantas, and Abaddon—drew on older Metal groups while seeking to take their music and presentation further. Abaddon recalls that Mantas had long been a major KISS fan, placing the band among the sources from which Venom selected and adapted particular influences.

Influence on Venom

The book distinguishes the contributions in that mixture: Venom drew stage presence from KISS, while taking diabolical lyrical content from Black Sabbath and originality as a model from Deep Purple. KISS is therefore associated specifically with performance, rather than presented as the source of Venom’s full musical style. Venom’s approach, as Abaddon describes it, was selective emulation of older bands rather than an attempt to reproduce one predecessor.

Place in the Account

KISS’s significance here is indirect but precise: Mantas’s admiration helped supply a performance reference for Venom’s larger combination of musical and visual influences. The account offers no further detail about KISS itself, keeping its focus on how Venom drew separate elements from established bands and recombined them into its own identity.