William_the_Bloody

Yes... well to each there own, Manowar is defiantly talented but,,,,,well...wait a second here... I'm having seconds thoughts. There so cheesy that they're
kind of cool.

The Batlord

Exactly.

__________________

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

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History