Welcome to Hell

Welcome to Hell is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Venom, released in December 1981 through Neat Records. After various line-up changes and recording several demo tapes in Impulse Studios, Venom gained success and attention with the single "In League with Satan", their dark, satanic image and their fast, raw sound. The band re-recorded all of the demos' songs, which Neat Records released as an album. Released during the peak of new wave of British heavy metal movement, Welcome to Hell was initially panned by critics, but later became recognised as an album seminal to the development of the then-nascent extreme metal scene and one of the most influential metal albums of all time. The album was re-released by Sanctuary Records in 2002.