Venom’s June 23 show at Parksnäckan in Uppsala was one of the more loaded stops on their 2026 “Welcome to Hell” European run. Coming off Sweden Rock Festival earlier in the month, the Uppsala date carried extra weight — a band that helped invent black metal, playing in the country that took the genre and ran with it.
Mantas and Abaddon kept things raw and direct. The setlist leaned hard into the early catalog, and the execution matched the intent: blunt, loud, and unpolished in the right ways. The night’s defining moment came when Lord Ahriman of Dark Funeral walked out to join them. It landed well for most of the crowd, though a portion of the audience felt it pulled the show slightly away from Venom’s original punk-driven edge. Both reactions make sense.
The crowd at Parksnäckan was dense and committed throughout. The energy didn’t dip, and the room held a particular tension — nostalgia and aggression running at the same time, which is exactly what a Venom show should feel like.
Sound-wise, the venue served the band well overall. The low end occasionally got heavy enough to muddy the mix, but it wasn’t a persistent problem. The staging was stripped back and deliberately so — no elaborate production, no visual distractions. That choice suited the material.
Ahriman’s presence was the clearest signal of where this version of Venom is positioning itself. They’re not chasing a mainstream reset. They’re engaging directly with the extreme metal world that grew out of their records, and Uppsala was a sharp example of that in practice.
