Lant never treated his art like a dusty museum piece. When Venom unleashed "Kicked Outta Hell" on April 15, 2026, music journalists praised the track's raw, unvarnished bite. The song carried none of the over-compressed, synthetic production common in late-2020s heavy metal. It was dirty, fast, and relentlessly rhythmic.
Musicians who pioneered thrash metal have repeatedly traced their earliest breakthroughs to Lant's work. Metallica covered Venom early in their career. Kerry King of Slayer frequently called Venom's early albums the direct spark that ignited his band's frantic speed. In Norway, second-wave black metal founders adopted Venom's 1982 album title as the name of their entire subculture.
Lant's visual aesthetics set standards that remain omnipresent today. Leather gear, inverted pentagrams, spiked gauntlets, and tongue-in-cheek dark theater all trace back to Lant's Newcastle bedroom, where he designed band logos and album jackets by hand while working in a local recording studio.
