Conrad Thomas Lant (born 15 January 1963), also known by his stage name Cronos, is an English musician. He is the founder, vocalist, bassist, and occasional guitarist of heavy metal band Venom. Biography Early life After playing in a couple of high school bands; Dwarfstar and Album Graecum, Conrad Lant took the stage name Cronos and joined a band called Guillotine as a guitarist in 1979, where he met Jeffrey Dunn, who later became Mantas. In 1979, the original bassist left one week before a church hall gig. Instead of not playing the venue, Cronos took up the bass and they changed the band name to 'Venom'. He continued to play the bass throughout his career in Venom. In 1980, the band's vocalist, Clive Archer (with stage name Jesus Christ), left the band, leaving Cronos to take over this role too and finalising the band into a three-piece group. Cronos was working in a recording studio after he left school called Impulse Studios, the studio had a number of labels releasing albums by folk musicians and local TV comedians, although he eventually convinced the studio to start a label for rock bands, the label was called 'Neat Records' and began signing bands from up and down the UK, releasing singles and albums from 1980 onwards. As the members of Venom could not afford the studio time fees, Cronos was able to talk the studio engineer into letting him have some free time in exchange for staying back late after work and carrying out other unpaid work. Cronos sent many copies of the Venom demos to various record labels and also the rock press, where a journalist for the 'Sounds' magazine [Geoff Barton] featured three Venom songs in his playlist, which got the attention of the label 'Neat Records', who then agreed to release the first Venom single. Cronos was also responsible for designing and creating all of the Venom logo and the sleeves artwork for their many single and album releases. He wanted to use the Sigil of Baphomet as the band's main emblem, although he wanted to recreate a new version of the sigil to be new and original concept, so he set out to redesigning it. The Venom logo was drawn and redrawn many times before he was happy, and the development of the logo can be seen from the band's many singles and albums releases, as the