Venom's inspirations go beyond heavy metal—it was actually glam-rock icons like David Bowie and Queen that first taught frontman Cronos the empowering effects of being a freak. But in Black Sabbath's 1975 proto-thrash epic “Symptom of the Universe”, he saw the potential to push metal to fierce new extremes, and in Kiss' marauding “God of Thunder”, he found the archetype for the demonic persona he would later inhabit.