Unknown Soldier

Luckily they phased out the creature from their later album covers.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

William_the_Bloody

Lol, love it! I'm still going to go with Venom though, cheers.

Unknown Soldier

Overview
Another NWOBHM band to yet again come out of the North East were the elaborately named Tygers of Pan Tang (the name coming from a Micahel Moorcock novel) and they hailed from Whitley Bay. Their debut album Wild Cat 1980 had been an average and choppy affair and they had also released the Live at Nottingham Rock City album as well. On these releases the band had displayed that they were just another average NWOBHM band, but when vocalist Jess Cox left the band to concentrate on his burgeoning record label Neat, the band drafted in replacement John Deverill on vocals and added a second guitarist in John Sykes and the overall effect was a major step up in quality for the band at least initially! Vocalist John Deverill had a vocal chord quality and versatility that Jess Cox hadn’t possessed and John Sykes was quite simply an amazing guitarist that would soon be in demand elsewhere. Much like Saxon, the Tygers of Pan Tang took the ‘flooding approach’ when it came to releasing material in that they flooded the market. 1980 had seen both the Wild Cat and the Live at Nottingham Rock City albums and in 1981 they released another two studio albums, the review represented Spellbound their best album and also Crazy Nights which came out at the end of the year and was definitely the weaker album of the two releases. The Tygers of Pan Tang stylistically sat somewhere in the Def Leppard and Saxon sphere of the NWOBHM and by the time of Spellbound they were banging on the heels of both Diamond Head and Angel Witch in terms of quality (despite not quite being upto the level of those two bands) and much like those bands their principal influences came from 1970s classic rock as a whole. The Tygers of Pan Tang were yet again another metal band that never quite realised just how good they could’ve been especially with some tweaking in certain areas, but much like the aforementioned Diamond Head and Angel Witch, they suffered from bad decision making and bad luck. For example if Diamond Head had been afflicted with bad timing and Angel Witch with line-up instability, then rushing material could be aimed at the Tygers of Pan Tang. The Spellbound album usually makes most essential NWOBHM listening lists and it was also one of the first NWOBHM albums that I ever listened to as well. Unsurprisngly the mascot of the band was a tiger which like Riot and unlike Iron Maiden was used on their album covers to corny effect. In fact the Spellbound album cover can literally be found hanging on the walls of most Indian restaurants still to this day around the UK! In 1989 the Spellbound album would be re-issued along with the debut Wild Cat as a double album set and a 1997 release of the album also includes a number of additional cuts worth having as well. Not long after the album’s release and the completion of Crazy Nights, winning guitarist John Sykes would move to Thin Lizzy before embarking on a brief career with Whitesnake.

Verdict
Spellbound is a consistently good album rather than being a classic album and it’s one of those albums that quite simply doesn’t really suffer from any weak tracks. The album is blessed with some great vocals, great riffs that are all tied up with some neat sounding melodic hooks that are littered across the album. The tracks tend to veer between vigorous and melodic, and usually end up being a combination of the two. The vigorous tracks include the ace album opener “Gangland” the lengthy “Minotaur” which is really the album’s unofficial title track, the Maiden sounding "Hellbound" and the best of the bunch in “Silver and Gold”. Then there is the album pacer “Blackjack” which is really highlighted by its killer riffage and John Deverill’s Robert Plant type delivery which is most evident on this song. Two of the albums most commercial tracks include “Tyger Bay” and its even more melodic and softer counterpart “The Story So Far” which is an obvious single if ever there was one especially with its classic hooks. The meat of the album is supplied with tasty sounding tracks like “Take It” which sounds like Grand Funk Railroad meets Dio fronted Black Sabbath and this concoction here is an obvious winner. There is the dramatic sounding ballad “Mirror” which is another great track that really highlights the vocal prowess of Jon Deverill, sadly a style that would be much exploited by metal in the 1980s and then finally there is the excellent album closer “Don’t Stop By” which comes across as probably the album’s showcase track despite its somewhat short listing time and would’ve been even better and more epic if it had been longer. In general Spellbound is a pretty stellar album on the ear that combines great melody with killer riffage, but on closer analysis the great playing by the band members especially John Sykes and the great and varied vocals of John Deverill, hide over the somewhat repetitive and one-dimensional approach to a number of the album’s tracks. This approach isn’t on all the album’s tracks, but it’s still on enough to be easily noted and in an age of musical excellence it’s one of the few if only black marks that can be raised against the album as a whole. Instead of recognizing these limitations the band got even blander, tamer and even more predictable on the following Crazy Nights album which was a major disappointment and which kind of resigned the band to being recognized as a somewhat one dimensional metal act, a label they could’ve well done without considering their overall ability. In general had the band displayed greater album depth on Spellbound something I’m sure the band were capable of, it would’ve pushed this album much higher on this year’s list. With this viewpoint aside though, Spellbound is still a winning release and an essential NWOBHM release for any budding fans out there. The album was held in fairly high esteem by a number of soon to be big metal acts as well and these acts were as varied as Kreator, Metallica and Europe to name just a few, which shows the broad appeal that the album had on up an coming metal acts.

John Deverill- Vocals
John Sykes- Guitar
Robbie Weir- Guitar
Richard Laws- Bass
Brian Dick- Drums

Production- Chris Tsangarides

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Urban Hat€monger ?

I remember an interview with the guy who sang on the Tygers first album (I forget his name).
He said the reason he got fired was because they wanted a more American commercial sound and they went into the studio and the producer told him to sing a harmony and he replied by saying 'What's a harmony?'

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Unknown Soldier

Jess Cox and yer he was known as not being a vocalist, so the 'harmony' point doesn't surprise me

Strangely enough without him, they may have been the most American of all the NWOBHM bands, as they drew just as much from say Grand Funk Railroad and Montrose as they did from say Led Zeppelin.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Trollheart

**** you all: Jess Cox was THE man for the Tygers! I still love "Wild cat" above all other Tygers albums and "Suzie smiled" is an underrated classic! Aw yeah!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I've known about the band for years and years and I've listened to a few songs, but I never actually listened to an album until a couple weeks ago, which was Wild Cat. I see it as being like a 2nd rate version of Iron Maiden's first two albums. When they were at their best they could compete with that band, but in general they just didn't have the songwriting chops. The best songs on that album all seemed to be rerecorded version of "Euthanasia", which is a fantastic song, but I can definitely see why US left them off the list last year.

Jess Cox was definitely the superior vocalist though. He may not have been as good a singer, but he was better at impersonating Paul DiAnno than the other guy was at impersonating Bruce Dickinson.

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Unknown Soldier

That's why we all love you, as you're guaranteed to like a band's weaker albums But I'll admit "Suzie Smiled" is a good song with a pretty killer riff.

Yer "Euthanasia" was a great song and sure they seemed to use this song as the basis for the Spellbound album and as I said they were pretty one dimensional as a band anyway.

Jess Cox was the gruffer vocalist but I prefer John Deverill overall. Also I wonder how much you think he would've been impersonating Bruce Dickinson anyway, as at the time of Spellbound Bruce Dickinson still wasn't with Iron Maiden (or if he was they hadn't recorded anything) and was still with Samson who were hardly famous, meaning that Bruce Dickinson hadn't yet reached the reverence level he would soon reach. Personally I think John Deverill was more into impersonating Dio and Robert Plant.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

I defer to you on the timeline, but from what little I've heard of him he just doesn't really excite me all that much. Jess Cox had some good energy to him though.

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Trollheart

The poor Tygers! I ran an article a year or more about them, in which I deplored the fact that their record company basically forced them into becoming an AOR band (damn you, MCA!) and thus lost them their fanbase. Tygers could have been brilliant, and I don't care what any of you say (how surprising!) --- "Killers" is a great powerpunch on that album, as is "Money" and "Don't touch me there".

Interesting point I made, and it stands up to examination, so check it out if you don't believe me:

Wild Cat --- debut album --- Tygers rockin' --- Tiger on cover bitchin and a badass. Ain't nobody gonna mess with that cat!

Spellbound --- Second album --- Tygers still rockin but headin towards AORville --- Tiger on cover looking still badass but a little unsure, sort of lost and unsure as he pauses, about to cross a gao (Hard rock to AOR?)

Crazy nights --- Third album --- Tygers much more AOR. Give us a single guys! Give us a hit! --- Tyger battling for his life, fighting off the annoying biplanes that might represent MCA execs

The Cage --- Final (real) album --- Tygers totally AOR, even doing a cover of Love Potion Number ****ing Nine for God's sake! --- The tiger is caged, and not happy.

I rest my case.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018