During a new appearance on The Tampa Morgue podcast, Jeff “Mantas” Dunn discussed his announcement that he was leaving VENOM INC. last December, approximately eight months after he suffered a second heart attack. The 63-year-old British-born guitarist, who currently resides with his wife in Portugal, previously suffered a heart attack and underwent a double bypass surgery in May 2018. Asked when he arrived at the decision to leave VENOM INC., Jeff said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, I can tell you now that the last fucking 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,” he continued. “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 fucking months. That destroyed us… Nobody knows what we had went through there. And then, obviously, I had the fucking 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,” Mantas explained. “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 fuck’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,” Jeff said. “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, ‘Fucking hell.’ And it was just, like, ‘When the fuck is this gonna end?’ It just came out of the blue as well. I was in the garden — bang, it just fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking opportunity, as far as I’m concerned.”All this fucking proclaiming he’s my best friend, he’s my brother, the door’s always open [for me to come back to VENOM INC.]. 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 fucking the plans up for touring? I’m so fucking sorry,” Jeff continued.”This really has fucking angered me — really fucking 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 fucking world’s coming down on your shoulders. I’ve just had enough. I’ve had enough.”Mantas went on to say that he made the decision to announce his departure from VENOM INC. after the band was booked to perform as the headliner of the Byker Grave festival on December 7, 2024 in Newcastle, United Kingdom.”There was this gig that they did in Newcastle, in my hometown, where I formed the band,” Jeff said. “I found out about that on a poster on Facebook. I wasn’t even told. I wasn’t even fucking 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 fucking dates.’ I sent a message back, ‘Can we talk about this?’ That was October the 3rd [of 2024]. Never heard a fucking 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.”Mantas explained: “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 fucking I can’t do anymore, but thank you so much for 40-odd, incredible fucking 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 fucking interviews [with Dolan that] just go straight up, like, damage limitation — that’s what I call them; [they’re] not fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking brother, I really loved that guy. And then this — okay, you think you’re VENOM? Go out there and fucking 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 fucking toilet that you want to. I don’t care. Leave me out of it. I’m done. I’m fucking done with it.”Last December, former NEVERMORE and ANNIHILATOR guitarist Curran Murphy confirmed that he had officially joined VENOM INC. as Mantas’s replacement.Several days after Mantas announced his exit from VENOM INC., Dolan was asked by Metal Kaoz if Dunn was officially out of the band. Tony responded: “Well, he made a statement about a year, probably a year and a half ago when his wife was sick and a statement went out in the press that I didn’t know was gonna go out, but he just said that he wasn’t gonna do any shows until further notice. So he felt he wanted to express that to people.”He continued: “They live in Portugal. They’re quite secluded in a lot of ways, [with] not a lot of friends around them. That’s how he likes it. But he felt he wanted to stay there and be there for her, which, of course, you had to. But he put this statement out saying he wouldn’t do shows until further notice. So I just took that on board. I thought, ‘Well, there’s no pressure. I’ll just keep going. I’ll keep the bus driving, the engines running.’ And if she’s better, because that’s what we were hoping for, that she would be fixed, and when it’s time, then we’ll just carry on. Just come back and off we go. But I was at a point where I’ve got an obligation to the label, to the manager, to the agents, to the bookers. That’s a lot of people who then don’t make any money. So I have to keep it going. And you can’t take an advance from publishing companies or from record labels and then just run away with the money. That’s not how it works. So I had to keep working to push sales to pay them back for what they had generously given us as an advance. So, that was gonna happen.”Dolan went on to say: “Then it got to about halfway through last year, last season, or maybe it was just before the season, she was doing better and he felt really good and he started to run through the material. We had a Belgian festival coming up. It was gonna be the first one [with him back on stage]… And he felt good. He was looking good and he sounded good and he sounded positive. Then I didn’t hear from him for three days. And then when I do get in touch with him, he’s in hospital and he had a second heart attack. And, of course, physically you might be okay, but mentally that’s two hits. And I think he just doesn’t wanna die running through an airport or walking on a stage in another country, a million miles away from home. And I can understand that. So, again, we were back to, ‘Okay, well, you don’t wanna tour. So I’ll do the touring. And then when the festivals come up, we’ll just see if you feel good about doing them.’ That was the idea. But then he was out of the game. So we just continued on while he stayed home and recuperated, really. And I kept sending him messages going, ‘There’s no pressure. Don’t worry about anything. Just get well. And then when you’re ready to go, go.’ And I kept making sure he was okay for money and everything like that. And then last week or something, someone sends me an image from the Internet saying, ‘Oh, why is Mantas not coming back?’ And I was, like, ‘Pardon?’ And then I get to see this Blabbermouth thing where he said he’s not coming back. And it was, like, ‘Okay.'”So I don’t know. I don’t know,” Dolan added. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s my brother. I love him. I don’t want nothing bad to happen. But I just need him to be happy. And if he’s happy being at home and recording in his home studio, his stuff that he does there, then fantastic. I can’t make him go out. I wouldn’t try and make him go out on the road against his wishes. But VENOM INC. is bigger than the people involved, and it means something. And there’s new fans.”Asked if there is a chance that Mantas will still be involved with VENOM INC. in the songwriting capacity in the future, Tony said: “Well, we’d already done two albums’ worth when we put the last album out [2022’s ‘There’s Only Black’]. So we’d overwritten, because it was supposed to go across two albums. That was the idea. The original idea was to have it as a double album. So, the first album [that was gonna] go out — it was all about Dante’s Inferno and the nine circles of hell. So it was your journey through life, from life to death. And that was the idea. But very quickly, when he had his heart attack, that changed because the meaning of him not seeing any light and seeing there’s only black, I was, like, ‘Wow, that’s it. ‘There’s Only Black’.’ And so we went from there. But we still have those recordings.”He’s spent the year recording some of that material that is not VENOM-esque,” Tony continued. “It’s kind of rock/metal, I guess, or whatever you wanna call it. It’s very him. And he loves doing that and he’s singing. So if he wants to do that, that’s fine.”I’ve been writing more stuff throughout the year, so 2025 will see two live albums go out, an EP — a new EP with this lineup — and a new album,” Tony revealed. “When we get to the album at the end of the year, if he still feels that he’s doing what he does and he wants to just do that, then I’ll let him do that. But if he feels he wants to push something down the tube, then absolutely. Because it was us, it was us. We were like a double act on stage. We were the Laurel and Hardy or whatever it is, or the Batman and Robin of music. So, it feels weird being without him there. So, however he wants to do it, I’ll be open to however he wants to do it. As long as he’s alive and he’s okay and he’s happy, then I’m happy. That’s the point of everything. There’s more things to life.”Dunn formed VENOM INC. nearly a decade ago with two other former VENOM members, Dolan and drummer Antony “Abaddon” Bray.In his announcement that he was leaving VENOM INC., Dunn said that his “health and wellbeing are of paramount importance to myself and my family,” but added that “there are also more personal issues which have influenced my decision.”Mantas sat out VENOM INC.’s fall 2023 U.S. tour after revealing that his wife had been diagnosed with cancer. He was replaced on the trek by Mike Hickey, known for his work with VENOM, CARCASS, CATHEDRAL and CRONOS.VENOM INC. is not to be confused with the Conrad “Cronos” Lant-fronted version of VENOM, which is continuing to tour and make albums under the VENOM moniker. Joining Cronos in that group are Rage (a.k.a. Stuart Dixon) on guitar and Danté (a.k.a. Danny Needham) on drums.VENOM’s classic lineup trio of Dunn, Lant and drummer Anthony “Abaddon” Bray recorded four studio LPs, “Welcome To Hell” (1981),”Black Metal” (1982),”At War With Satan” (1984) and “Possessed” (1985),and live album, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (1986). Often cited by bands such as METALLICA, BEHEMOTH, CELTIC FROST and MAYHEM as major influences, they are one of the most revered bands of their generation. VENOM is still fronted by Cronos and headlines festivals all over the globe and continues to release new music while Dunn and Dolan had joined forces in the similarly named VENOM INC.[embedded content]