BAT have opened their archive for a tribute that feels less like a polished memorial and more like a live wire. The Richmond heavy-speed metal trio have released a previously unheard cover of Venom’s “Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)” following the death of Cronos, paying respect to one of the musicians who helped define metal’s most dangerous early vocabulary.
A recording carried forward from 2015
According to Nuclear Blast’s official announcement, the cover was recorded in 2015 during the sessions for BAT’s debut album Wings of Chains. It remained unreleased for more than a decade before the band chose to share it as a tribute.
The track features Ryan Waste and Nick Poulos with guitarist Felix Griffin, known for his work with NWOBHM cult heroes D.R.I. The recording was mixed and mastered by Joel Grind, whose production fingerprints are closely associated with the modern revival of raw speed metal.
Why this Venom song fits BAT
“Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)” sits at the point where punk velocity, hard-rock swagger and extreme-metal menace collide. That same unstable mix is central to BAT. Their version does not need to reinvent the song; its purpose is to reveal the lineage clearly, with clipped riffs, physical drumming and a vocal attack that treats the chorus like a gang oath.
For a band built around first-wave speed-metal instincts, covering Venom is not a costume exercise. It is a reminder that heaviness was once defined as much by attitude and abrasion as by precision. BAT preserve that friction rather than smoothing it into a contemporary studio product.
A tribute without ceremony
The delayed release gives the recording an accidental historical weight. Captured while BAT were shaping their own debut, it documents a direct conversation between generations: musicians working within a vocabulary created by Venom, then returning to the tape when one of that vocabulary’s architects is gone.
That is why the track lands more forcefully than a newly assembled, overly reverent cover might have. The performance existed before it was needed as a memorial. Its energy was already honest; the context simply changed.
The underground keeps its memory in songs
Metal’s history is often preserved through sleeves, demos, bootlegs and covers rather than formal institutions. By releasing this version, BAT add one more surviving link to that chain. Listeners hear not only a Venom classic, but also the way its urgency continued to move through underground rooms decades later.
BAT’s “Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)” is best understood as exactly what it sounds like: fast, rough, affectionate and unwilling to stand at a respectful distance.
Editorial image: Alex G / Unsplash. Source: Nuclear Blast Records.
