Welcome to Hell is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Venom released in December 1981 through Neat Records.

In 1979, Conrad "Cronos" Lant applied for a job at Impulse Studios in Wallsend as an audio-visual engineer for Neat Records.

[2][3] Many of the earliest recordings of songs from the album were written by guitarist Jeffrey Dunn before eventual vocalist and bassist Conrad Lant even joined the band in November 1979.

They performed the tracks: "Angel Dust", "Red Light Fever", "Buried Alive", "Raise The Dead" and the band song "Venom".

Lant then made cassette copies of the 3 songs and sent them to various record companies, radio stations, music magazines and rock clubs.

Eventually, he agreed and this was when I finally got 4 hours session time so we could record the 3 track demo, at last we had a good-ish quality recording our ourselves to play to the world, and I made as many copies as I could to mail out to all sorts of labels and magazines, and one mag in particular was 'Sounds Magazine', which one of the editors; Geoff Barton decided to put all 3 tracks in his weekly play list, and for a few weeks running, he claimed he loved them so much he didn't want 3 different artists like the other journalists put in their play lists, he put all 3 of our songs from the demo tape."

[2][3] "When it was time to record Live Like An Angel Jeff asked me if I'd have a go singing it, I said "Hell Yeah", although at the end of the session we had a band meeting and the guitarist and drummer said that they preferred my vocal style to Clive's.

I must say he was very big about the whole situation even though he had in reality just been sacked, he said we could keep his PA for me to sing through, and his parting words were something like; 'I fucking love this band, I really hope you guys make it.

[1] Lyrically, the songs explore themes such as hedonism, sexual depravity ("Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)", "1000 Days in Sodom", "Red Light Fever", "Poison"), serial killing ("Schizoid"), drug use ("Angel Dust"), witchcraft ("Witching Hour") and Satanism ("Welcome to Hell", "In League with Satan").

The artwork appears on a black background, with a large golden circular pentacle containing the head of the Goat of Mendes, a stylised Baphomet with a fierce expression; above that is the band logo "Venom" and under the title of the disc in gothic characters.

The logo of the record company on the various vinyl LP prints varies in colour, ranging from silver to blue, green, white and red.

[12] British journalist Geoff Barton stated in his 1981 five-star review of Welcome to Hell that the album had "the hi-fi dynamics of a 50-year-old pizza", and that it "brought a new meaning to the word 'cataclysmic'".

[11] According to AllMusic journalist Eduardo Rivadavia, highlights of the album include "Welcome to Hell", "In League with Satan", "One Thousand Days in Sodom" and "Witching Hour"; Rivadavia said of "Witching Hour": "Possibly Venom's single most important track, in it you'll hear a number of stylistic devices which would later pervade all extreme metal genres, indeed become their most regularly abused clichés.

The concert took place on 4 June 1982 and was attended by over 3,000 fans, and after a successful show in Poperinge the band now set their sights on the United States.