Tyger, tyger, burning very bright indeed...
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Ambush ---- Tygers of Pan-Tang --- 2012 (Rocksector)
So the tiger is going extinct, is it? Well that's really sad and I hate that it's a fact of our uncaring world, but there's one tiger (or indeed, five) thought wiped out who has come roaring back this year with renewed energy, purpose and determination. Now admittedly this is a completely new lineup to the one I knew --- although these guys have already put out one album in 2008 --- with only guitarist Robb Weir surviving from the original Tygers setup, but the music is as sharp-edged and biting and roaringly fun as ever. Roping in Chris Tsangarides (wonder do they call him “Pan-Tsangarides”? Probably not to his face...) who worked on the seminal “Wild cat” and “Spellbound” albums, on which the Tygers produced some of their very best music, it looks in a way like a return to the early eighties, when the Tygers stomped and growled into the NWOBHM with songs like “Killers”, “Suzie smiled”, “Hellbound” and “Silver and gold”.
With a new* vocalist (and new everything) in Italian Jacopo Meille, there's a deceptively acoustic start to “Keeping me alive” before the familiar electric guitar of Robb Weir, always a signature sound for the Tygers, blasts in and then thumping drums from new guy Craig Ellis before we get a chance to sample the chops of the latest Tygers singer. Certainly betraying no hint of his Italian heritage, he's a fitting replacement for Jon Deverill, and the song rocks along but with a certain restraint, almost touches of AOR in the vocal harmonies, but much harder guitar work than we heard in “Crazy nights”, where they began to listen too much to their label and softened their sound, resulting in accusations of selling out, and the inevitable decline in their popularity, which eventually led to their disbanding.
Great solo from Weir, and it's really like the last thirty years never happened: the Tygers are back! There's the very best elements from Kiss and Leppard in “These eyes”, with a hint of Dio too, a great growling riff leading the charge, a big dirty rocker, and the pace doesn't slacken for a moment as we head into “One of a kind”, Meille exercising his chops and sounding like he's been there all his life. Dean Robertson's guitars complement Weir's perfectly, with Gavin Gray meshing with Ellis to form the perfect rhythm section. If I was to make a negative comment, it would be that so far there's not a lot of variety. It's all hard heavy rockers, the kind of thing I loved on their debut “Wild cat”, but tracks like “Rock and roll dream”, “She” and “Man on fire” all tend to blend together a little.
Not that that's a bad thing: this is rock and metal the way it should be, the way it used to be, with the Tygers returning to what they know and do best, and excelling at it. “Play to win” recalls “Silver and gold” from the “Spellbound” album, one of the fastest and heaviest on this album, while there's a very Iron Maidenesque guitar wailing opening to “Burning desire”, but it soon sheds any such similarities and becomes very much its own song, a big heavy cruncher with some killer guitar. Weir straps on the talkbox for “Hey Suzie”, their update of their minor hit from “Wild cat”, and the first song I ever heard from them. It's got quite a boogie rhythm and whereas Meille's voice is not the ragged drawl Jess Cox's was on the original, it's a good reprise of an overlooked classic, and Robb even throws in his original riff and ending, with the drums punching out the last notes as they did on “Wild cat”.
It's pretty obvious at this point there aren't going to be any ballads. Classic Tygers never messed with the slower songs; that only happened on the back of pressure from the label, later in their career, and became an attempt to totally change their sound, which completely backfired. Gavin Gray gets to showcase his smooth bass playing in “Mr. Indispensable”, on which Jacopo Meille's Italian accent betrays itself for the first time, and the album closes on yet another hard rocker, aptly entitled “Speed”, as it powers along like a freight train.
TRACKLISTING
1. Keeping me alive
2. These eyes
3. One of a kind
4. Rock and roll dream
5. She
6. Man on fire
7. Play to win
8. Burning desire
9. Hey Suzie
10. Mr. Indispensable
11. Speed
I'm not going to make any claims about this being the best rock, or metal, album released this year. I'm not even going to say it's the best the Tygers have done, but it's definitely a return to the glory days of the early eighties, before their sound was so diluted by record company executives without a drop of rock in their blood, looking only to maximise the band's financial returns. This sounds more like the Tygers I know, doing things their way, and though there's only one original Tyger left, you'd have to think that the others, wherever they are and whatever they're doing, should they hear this album must think, yeah, that's how we should have done it.
After an absence of four years --- though for me, really, it's been more like thirty, as I haven't listened to anything since “The Cage” --- the Tygers are back, and they're roaring, hungry, and out to getcha!
(* = New to me, new to me! I haven't heard the Tygers since 1982!)