On a recent episode of The Tampa Morgue podcast, Jeff “Mantas” Dunn spoke about his decision to leave VENOM INC. last December, nearly eight months after experiencing a second heart attack.
When asked when he decided to leave VENOM INC., Mantas said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Well, I can tell you now that the last f**king conversation that I had with [Tony] Dolan [VENOM INC. bassist/vocalist] was March the 26th. That was nearly a month before I had the [second] heart attack. I did not receive one single phone call after that. I got the occasional text saying, ‘How are you doing?’ but he never called me. And you know what it is? I was in a bad way after that heart attack, after the second one. Mentally I was worse than the first one. I didn’t come into [my] studio for months. When I came in, my guitars were, there was rust all over them. I had to repair everything.
“On that March the 26th conversation, we discussed me returning [to VENOM INC.] just for the festivals. And I said, ‘Look, I can do probably do two weeks or something like that,’ but even then that was getting a stretch because [my wife], she had been misdiagnosed with cancer and that went on for f**king months. That destroyed us… Nobody knows what we had went through there. And then, obviously, I had the f**king second heart attack.
“On that March 26th conversation, we discussed me returning for a show on May the 18th, I think it was, in Belgium, which was gonna be a festival,” he continued. “I had done my last two shows and then bowed out of the second leg of the American tour. And I just wanted to get back to [my wife] because she just had the diagnosis. And as I said, ‘There’s no way I’m leaving her with a diagnosis like that. I don’t know what the f**k’s gonna happen.’ Thankfully, that diagnosis has been overturned, but she’s still going through a medical investigation because there’s still something wrong that they can’t find. Now she’s got an emergency MRI scan coming up because we’ve just had another hospital appointment on Thursday where the gastroenterologist has turned around and said, ‘We need an MRI.’ And this will tell us definitively if it is a cancerous thing. We need to know, I don’t think it is personally, but we need to know. So we’re still not out of the woods.
“Me having the second heart attack, it affected her as well. That was April 17th [of 2024]. That needed surgical intervention. I had two stents put in. Then I’ve got a two-to-three-week recovery after that. I was in pain all the time, I was, like, ‘F**king hell.’ And it was just, like, ‘When the f**k is this gonna end?’ It just came out of the blue as well. I was in the garden — bang, it just f**king happened. And the next thing I knew, there was two ambulances at the door.
“[Dolan and I] had that conversation on March the 26th, and then there was nothing after that. I didn’t get a phone call. And like I say, I was in a f**king bad way. And maybe, just maybe, all I wanted to do was pour my heart out to my best friend. And I never got that f**king opportunity, as far as I’m concerned.
“All this f**king proclaiming he’s my best friend, he’s my brother, the door’s always open [for me to come back to band]. And then I see a private message between him and a person that I know as well, ‘Oh, Mantas‘s just stabbed me in the back.’
“Can you help me understand that, how I stabbed you in the back? What? By having two heart attacks and f**king the plans up for touring? I’m so f**king sorry. This really has f**king angered me — really f**king angered me. And if anybody thinks I’m gonna sit back now at my age and just take all that and watch what’s going on — no. Open your mouth once more and the f**king world’s coming down on your shoulders. I’ve just had enough. I’ve had enough.
Mantas stated that his decision to leave VENOM INC. was prompted by the band’s booking as headliners for the Byker Grave festival in Newcastle, UK, on December 7, 2024.
“There was this gig that they did in Newcastle, in my hometown, where I formed the band,” he said. “I found out about that on a poster on Facebook. I wasn’t even told. I wasn’t even f**king told. So I let that go. I let it go. I got the message about the American tour. I looked at the dates and thought, ‘You know for a fact there’s no way I can do all those f**king dates.’ I sent a message back, ‘Can we talk about this?’ That was October the 3rd [of 2024]. Never heard a f**king thing back — not once. And I said, ‘Can we talk about this? Let me know when you’re free.’ Because he’s always at work or he’s always doing something. He doesn’t answer the phone. So I was, like, ‘Just let me know.’ I didn’t say this in the message, but if he had said, ‘Right, I’ve got Tuesday, I’ve got 30 minutes’ — perfect. That’s all I need. That’s all the time I need.”
“My idea was gonna be, ‘Okay then. I’ll fly to Newcastle. I can see my daughter, I can see my grandkids, I can see a few friends. I’ll play the show, and on that show, at the end of it, I’ll say, ‘Thank you, Newcastle. This is where it started and for me, this is where it ends. I now hand the reins over. And f**king I can’t do anymore, but thank you so much for 40-odd, incredible f**king years.’ Next thing I knew, they’re promoting the show. All right. Okay. So, I decided, ‘That’s it.’ I make the statement. I leave [VENOM INC. in early December]. And then a week later, well, after that, there’s all these f**king interviews [with Dolan that] just go straight up, like, damage limitation — that’s what I call them; [they’re] not f**king interviews. And then I put [my solo song] ‘Losing My Faith’, the first clip of the video up, that night when that video went off, he unfriended and blocked me on f**king everything — and [my wife], and her daughter. And that is the truth. Now please help me understand why. Let me know why.
“As long as I have breath left in me on this planet, I will never speak to him again. Never. Because as much as I loved that guy, and I did, I loved that guy like a f**king brother, I really loved that guy. And then this — okay, you think you’re VENOM? Go out there and f**king do it. And I said in a statement the other night, go and play at every arena that you want to, or you can go play every f**king toilet that you want to. I don’t care. Leave me out of it. I’m done. I’m f**king done with it.”
Dunn founded VENOM INC. almost ten years ago alongside fellow former VENOM members, Dolan and drummer Antony “Abaddon” Bray.
Source: metaladdicts.com
