Conrad Lant

Cronos
Background information
Birth name Conrad Thomas Lant
Also known as Cronos
Born 15 January 1963 (1963-01-15) (age 49)
Origin London
Genres Thrash metal, black metal, speed metal, heavy metal
Occupations Musician, songwriter
Instruments Bass, vocals, guitar
Years active 1979–present
Associated acts Venom, Cronos, Probot

Conrad Thomas Lant (aka Cronos) (born 15 January 1963, London)[1] is a British musician who is the vocalist and bass player of the influential black/thrash metal band Venom, from 1979 to 1987 and from 1995 to present.

Contents

Biography

Early life

After joining his high school band Dwarfstar, he joined Guillotine as a guitarist in 1978, where he met Jeffrey Dunn (aka Mantas). In 1980, the original bass player left one week before a gig. Instead of not playing the venue, Lant took up the bass and they changed the band name to Venom. He continued to play the bass throughout his career in Venom. In 1981, the band's vocalist Clive Archer left, leaving Lant to take over this role too.

Solo career

Lant left the band in 1988 to pursue a solo career and occasionally featured in many other bands of a similar genre, including Cronos, Enthroned, Cradle of Filth (Cronos contributed a monologue to the end of the Cradle track, Haunted Shores), Warpath, Massacre, and Necrodeath. He also produced some of the albums for other bands.

Venom tried to continue without Cronos but only managed a couple of releases before calling a halt on their efforts in around 1993 due to lack of sales and poor concert attendances. Cronos reformed the original Venom line-up in 1995 and headlined the Dynamo Festival in 1996 to 90,000 fans.

Recent developments

In 2000, the band went on to headline the Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany and play a one-off show in Holland before they were forced to take a break after Cronos was injured in a climbing accident in 2002, which left him unable to play bass or sing for a few years.[2] He took to the computer to pass the time and studied games programming, learned 3D software skills and worked as the main multimedia engineer for the computer companies K-Class Systems and Globalfibre.tv.

Cronos again reformed Venom in around 2003 with his brother Antton on drums and recruiting Michael Alan Hickey. After the next couple of years of planning and intensive rehearsals, Venom released their album 'Metal Black' in early 2006 on the Sanctuary Group label Castle Music, and they embarked on a sold out world tour. Venom also played the classic single ' Die Hard ' along with Phil Anselmo (Pantera , Down) in the Gods of Metal 2006 ( Italy ) where they headlined . Cronos also appeared on Dave Grohl's heavy metal side project Probot in 2004, and guest starred on the track Knights of the 21st century on HammerFall's 2005 album Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken.

Equipment

Bass guitars

Cronos had two other basses which are seen on the DVD which comes with the deluxe version of Black Metal. These basses have been destroyed.

Amplifiers

Discography

with Venom

with Cronos

other appearances

References