Welcome to Hell is the 1981 debut album by the British heavy metal band Venom. The sound of the album was very noisy and rough, perhaps in part because the band thought they were recording a demo when they recorded the album over a period of only three days. Geoff Barton stated[citation needed] in his 1981 five-star review of Welcome to Hell the album had "the hi-fi dynamics of a 50-year-old pizza" and it "brought a new meaning to the word 'cataclysmic'". However, those comments compared it to other heavy metal from the early eighties. While the term "black metal" may have not been created until Venom's second album, it can be noted Welcome to Hell contains common speed metal elements, and it has a decidedly darker and doomed feel, a characteristic of black metal.
