Black Metal (Venom album)

Black Metal is the second studio album by English heavy metal band Venom, released on 1 November 1982 through Neat Records. Released during the new wave of British heavy metal, the album is considered to be a major influence on the speed metal, thrash metal, death metal and black metal scenes that emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The album lent its name to the black metal subgenre, but its music was an early form of extreme metal which still had roots in traditional heavy metal. AllMusic described it as "sowing the seeds of much that would be referred to as extreme metal", and Moynihan & Søderlind in their book Lords of Chaos affirmed that the album "carved in stone some of [black metal's] essential features". Nevertheless, its lyrics and imagery were a major influence on the early Norwegian black metal scene.