TYGERS OF PAN TANG
Biography and full discography of TYGERS OF PAN TANG, with a page for every album, on METAL BOOST.
Biography
TYGERS OF PAN TANG
Biography
At a glance
Tygers of Pan Tang came out of Whitley Bay, a seaside town in Tyne and Wear on the north-east coast of England. They belong to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the wave that carried Iron Maiden and Saxon out of local halls and onto the national charts at the same moment, and guitarist Robb Weir has been there from the first day to this one.
1978 is the usual founding year, and the band marked "45 years" in December 2023. It is not quite settled even among the people who were there: Weir told Sea of Tranquility in 2012, in as many words, that they had started in 1979, and framed their 1999 Wacken appearance as a twentieth anniversary — which is what Jess Cox calls it too. This account uses 1978 and does not claim a month.
Their Official Charts record reads: Wild Cat No. 18 (entered 30 August 1980, five weeks), Spellbound No. 33 (18 April 1981, four weeks), Crazy Nights No. 51 (21 November 1981, three weeks) and The Cage No. 13 (28 August 1982, eight weeks). The album that charted highest is also the one that finished the band.
Out of Whitley Bay
Bassist Richard "Rocky" Laws met Robb Weir and drummer Brian Dick around 1976 and started out roadying for Trick, Weir's punk band, before the three of them began playing together. Then they went looking for a singer. The first one was Mark Butcher, not Jess Cox. Laws: "we looked for a singer and a guy called Mark Butcher joined the band. We did about 25 shows with Mark. After Mark left we had a bit of a hiatus then got back together and Jess Cox joined." Dick remembers their first gig the same way — "we were a four piece then with singer Mark Butcher." Most short accounts of this band make Cox a founder. The men who were in it do not.
That first gig was at the Coach and Eight in Durham, and by Dick's count exactly one person came. The set included covers of Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever", Rush's "Bastille Day" and Motörhead. For a while they worked North East pubs and working men's clubs, where the rule was two one-hour sets a night, filling them out with AC/DC and Status Quo alongside their own songs.
The name is Rocky Laws's doing, taken from Michael Moorcock's novel Stormbringer. Dick is plain about it: "Rocky came up with the band name, Tygers of Pan Tang, he lifted it from Sci-Fi novel Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock." Weir's version fills in the picture — to reach the emperor's lands you had to get past the cliffs of Pan Tang, which were guarded not by attack dogs but by the emperor's tigers. In 2019 he said simply that the name "has stood us well for the last 41 years".
They were found by David Wood of Neat Records, at a gig at Whitley Bay High School, which is where Wood's children went. Their first studio work was at Impulse Studios in Wallsend, and everything they cut for Neat was produced by Steve Thompson. The debut single "Don't Touch Me There" appeared in 1979. As Cox tells it, Neat was the middle of a scene that also took in Raven and Venom, busy enough that the London papers gave it a name: the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
A misprint, and a deal with MCA
The way this band reached a major label is, by their own account, faintly ridiculous. They headlined the Mayfair Ballroom in Newcastle and drew 1,500 people, which Music Week misprinted as 15,000, and MCA Records read the figure and offered them a contract. That is Rocky Laws's telling of it.
They first saw the phrase NWOBHM in Geoff Barton's writing in Sounds. After the paper ran pieces on Def Leppard and Iron Maiden, the band's manager posted Barton a tape saying there was a comparable band up in Newcastle, and they turned up in the following week's round-up. Things moved after that. Their first support was two nights with Iron Maiden at the Marquee; their first national tour was opening for Magnum; then came Def Leppard's On Through the Night tour and Saxon's Wheels of Steel.
Wild Cat was made at Morgan Studios in London in the summer of 1980 with Chris Tsangarides producing and Ian Cooper mastering. Weir puts the recording at thirteen days.
John Sykes and Jon Deverill
John Sykes came in as second guitarist in mid-1980, while Cox was still singing; Laws calls Reading 1980 "John Sykes first proper gig with the band". That November Cox left. Weir's account is that Cox had been talking to Dennis Stratton, on his way out of Iron Maiden and laying the groundwork for Lionheart. The band advertised in the music press in a hurry, and out of the applicants took Jon Deverill from Cardiff — who, as it happens, had watched the Tygers open for Magnum in his own home town earlier that year.
The two of them changed the band. "The sound of the Tygers changed totally after John and myself joined," Deverill says. "We now had two guitarists so it became much fuller. I'm a completely different singer to Jess Cox. I have a bigger range and yes, a more lyrical approach." He rates Sykes "the best by far" of anyone he played with. What that line-up made was Spellbound, out on 10 April 1981 as MCF 3104, cut at Morgan again with Tsangarides. Gary Moore was working in Studio 2 at the time; Sykes idolised him, and Moore lent him the 1950s Les Paul that had passed through Peter Green's and Jeff Beck's hands.
The trouble came next. Crazy Nights followed on 3 November 1981 as MCF 3123, and everyone involved calls it a failure. Laws says they did not demo it, that much of it was written in the studio over a chord sequence, and that there are almost no overdubs and no backing vocals. Deverill: "We felt under pressure from our record company to deliver another album and it was rushed. We weren't ready and we were also exhausted due to constant touring... For me, it's work in progress and an unfinished album." Three albums in fifteen months was the real problem. The launch was at the Marquee on Bonfire Night, 5 November 1981.
The Cage, and the end
Sykes left in the spring of 1982 to audition for Ozzy Osbourne's band after Randy Rhoads died. He did not get the job, and when he asked to come back the answer was no — Laws is explicit about that. His replacement was Fred Purser, out of the Newcastle punk band Penetration, brought in to cover a booked French tour and kept because it worked.
The Cage (MCF 3150, 1982) was made at Marquee Studios in London with Peter Collins producing — his first rock record, years before Rush. Sykes plays on only two of its tracks, "Love Potion No. 9" and "Danger in Paradise"; the first was the band's first session with Collins, cut while Sykes was still a member. Deverill on the change of direction: "our record company totally interfered and pushed songs on us. That 'hit single' thing that was so prevalent in the 80's rock scene. Everyone suddenly had to be Bon Jovi!"
It worked commercially. No. 13 is the band's highest placing, and it took them to Japan for the first time — five shows in four-thousand-seat halls, all sold out, by Weir's account. At Reading in 1982 they played sandwiched between Blackfoot and Iron Maiden, and did well out of it.
The same success ended them. "In the success of our fourth album The Cage lay the seed of the band's demise," Laws says. "MCA records wanted to do more covers and more rocked up versions of soul classics and we didn't want to do it." Weir describes the same plan from the other side: The Cage was to be the start of an American campaign, and that meant a more commercial edge. A fifth album was demoed on a four-track and never released.
Two albums without Robb Weir
This is the part of the story most often got wrong. Neither Robb Weir nor Rocky Laws plays on The Wreck-Age (1985) or Burning in the Shade (1987). Weir: "that happened two or three years after we had broken up." He had formed Sergeant with Brian Dick and then worked with Jess Cox as Tyger Tyger. Jon Deverill carried the name on with Dick and three local musicians, and those two records are what that band made.
Music for Nations issued The Wreck-Age in 1985; Zebra Records issued Burning in the Shade in 1987. Deverill on the latter: "I wrote it with Steve Thompson and it was my last involvement with the Tygers Of Pan Tang... there's some great guitar work from Steve Lamb who's an amazing guitarist by the way. Certainly up there with John and Fred. I'm very proud of this record." Brian Dick played on six studio albums and stopped after a final European run in the autumn of 1987. Deverill left music altogether, trained for three years at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and became an actor.
Wacken 1999, and the restart
It began with a phone call. In 1999 Wacken Open Air asked for a twentieth-anniversary show. Cox: "I did do the 20th Anniversary Tygers show with Rob Weir at Wacken Festival in 1999 – the other lads didn't want to do it so we got Blitzkrieg to back us." That performance is what Spitfire released in 2001 as Live at Wacken.
Weir put a working band back together in 2000, and drummer Craig Ellis has been in it ever since. Mystical (Z Records, 2001) is the first studio album of the second life, followed by Noises From the Cathouse (Communique, 2003), Animal Instinct (Live Wire, 2008), Ambush (Rocksector, 2012) and then the Mighty Music run: the self-titled album of 2016, Ritual in 2019 and Bloodlines in 2023.
Ambush was a deliberate reunion of more than the band. Chris Tsangarides, who had made Wild Cat and Spellbound, produced it at his own Ecology Rooms studio in Deal; Rodney Matthews, who painted Crazy Nights in 1981, did the sleeve; and Ian Cooper, who mastered the first two albums, mastered this one.
Since Jack Meille
The singer now is Jacopo "Jack" Meille, an Italian who lives in Florence. Weir's account of the audition: "When Jack did the first audition for the band in 2004 or 2005, he came to the North East of England, Newcastle Upon Tyne, where we live. The first song he played was Hellbound. After 45 seconds I stopped hearing, I looked at all the others who were there and said 'is that okay for everybody?'"
The rest of the line-up can be followed through the band's own announcements. Bassist Brian West stepped down at the end of 2011 after twelve years, and Gav Gray, who had been deputising, was made permanent. Guitarist Dean Robertson left on 3 January 2013 after more than twelve years, and Michael "Micky Crystal" McCrystal replaced him six weeks later; Crystal himself parted from the band in April 2020 after seven years. Huw Holding joined on bass in August 2021 and played his first show in Southampton that October. John Foottit was announced as guitarist on 19 January 2026.
Live Blood (2024) was recorded the previous year at The Patriot Club in Wales, and the end of 2024 brought a reissue of Animal Instinct with a new remix by Marco Angioni and new artwork by Andy Pilkington. Electrifyed, the first studio album with Foottit, follows in September 2026.
Tygers of Pan Tang in Japan
The connection dates from The Cage. "The Cage was a commercial success and was our biggest album and we went to Japan," Laws says; Weir remembers five sold-out shows in four-thousand-capacity halls.
On record, Victor issued The Wreck-Age in Japan on 21 January 1986 as VDP-1066, and the four MCA albums were put on CD together on 16 December 1992 as MVCM-314 to 317. More recently Marquee Inc. (Avalon) has handled the Japanese editions: Electrifyed appears as MICP-12044 on 9 September 2026, two days ahead of the international release. Universal Music Store also carries SHM-CD reissues of the MCA albums.
One detail worth recording: the Japanese spelling of the band's name is not agreed. Tower Records, diskunion, HMV, BARKS and Universal Music Store all write タイガース・オブ・パンタン, and this site follows them. The band's current Japanese label, Marquee/Avalon, writes タイガーズ・オブ・パンタン in its own product metadata, which is why Amazon.co.jp product titles use that form while Amazon's own artist entry uses the other.
Members
The current line-up, as the band signed its own news post in May 2026 ("Robb, Craig, Jack, Huw and John"): Robb Weir (guitar, founder), Craig Ellis (drums, since 2000), Jacopo "Jack" Meille (vocals, since 2004), Huw Holding (bass, since 2021) and John Foottit (guitar, since 2026).
Former members include Mark Butcher (the first singer), Jess Cox (vocals), Richard "Rocky" Laws (bass, and the man who named the band), Brian Dick (drums), John Sykes (guitar, 1980–1982, later Thin Lizzy, Whitesnake and Blue Murder), Jon Deverill (vocals), Fred Purser (guitar), Steve Lamb (guitar), Brian West (bass), Dean Robertson (guitar), Gav Gray (bass) and Micky Crystal (guitar).
The band's official site has no line-up page, so this site carries no first-party member section for them. Everything above comes from news posts and from the members' own interviews.
Discography (as catalogued here)
| Year | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Electrifyed | Studio |
| 2024 | Live Blood | Live |
| 2023 | Bloodlines | Studio |
| 2022 | A New Heartbeat | EP |
| 2019 | Ritual | Studio |
| 2016 | Tygers of Pan Tang | Studio |
| 2012 | Ambush | Studio |
| 2008 | Animal Instinct | Studio |
| 2005 | Leg of the Boot: Live in Holland | Live |
| 2003 | Live in the Roar | Live |
| 2003 | Noises From the Cathouse | Studio |
| 2001 | Live at Wacken | Live |
| 2001 | Live at Nottingham Rock City | Live |
| 2001 | Mystical | Studio |
| 1987 | Burning in the Shade | Studio |
| 1985 | The Wreck-Age | Studio |
| 1982 | The Cage | Studio |
| 1981 | Crazy Nights | Studio |
| 1981 | Spellbound | Studio |
| 1980 | Wild Cat | Studio |
Sources
This account rests on the band's own site at tygersofpantang.com — its discography, news, news archive, Robb Weir's blog and the press_pedro interview — together with the Official Charts Company's chart record, MusicBrainz release data, Alikivi's interviews with Richard "Rocky" Laws and Brian Dick, Defenders of the Faith's interviews with Robb Weir and Jon Deverill, Metal Express Radio's interview with Jess Cox, and pages from Metal Plague, Toilet ov Hell, Sea of Tranquility, Louder (Classic Rock and Metal Hammer), MetalTalk, BARKS, Tower Records, diskunion, HMV, Universal Music Store and the band's own Bandcamp. Sources disagree about the founding year and about whether Noises From the Cathouse is a 2003 or a 2004 record; where they do, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved. Album ordinals are used only where the band or its label states one.
Trivia
The Japanese spelling of the band's name is not settled. Tower Records, diskunion, HMV, BARKS and Universal Music Store all write タイガース・オブ・パンタン, while the band's current Japanese label, Marquee Inc. (Avalon), writes タイガーズ・オブ・パンタン in its own product metadata. That is why on Amazon.co.jp the artist entity uses one spelling and the product titles use the other.
The success of The Cage took them to Japan. Rocky Laws puts it simply: The Cage was a commercial success and their biggest album, and they went to Japan.
The Official Charts Company's record of this band reads: Wild Cat number 18 for five weeks, Spellbound number 33 for four, Crazy Nights number 51 for three, and The Cage number 13 for eight. Among the singles, "Hellbound" reached 48 and "Rendezvous" 49. The album that charted highest is the same one that finished the band.
Hiring the band's current singer took less than a minute. Robb Weir's account is that Jacopo "Jack" Meille came up to Newcastle upon Tyne to audition in 2004 or 2005; the first song he sang was "Hellbound", and after forty-five seconds Weir stopped listening, looked round at everyone else in the room and asked whether that was all right with them.
In November 2021 the band took the NWOBHM award at the Hard Rock Hell Awards in Great Yarmouth, with Robb Weir collecting it. What their own site chose to dwell on was not the award so much as who got in touch about it: congratulations arrived from former members John Sykes and Jon Deverill.
Ritual (2019) was made at Trinity Heights Studio in Newcastle, which belongs to Fred Purser. The guitarist who replaced John Sykes in 1982 and played on The Cage was, thirty-seven years later, engineering a Tygers record. The band produced it themselves and Soren Andersen mixed.
The debut single "Don't Touch Me There" was re-recorded in 2019 for its fortieth anniversary. Four guitarists took a solo on it: Robb Weir, the band's then-guitarist Micky Crystal, former Tyger and producer Fred Purser, and producer Soren Andersen. It came out as the B-side of the "White Lines" twelve-inch.
The band's long association with Mighty Music and The Target Group in Denmark began by accident. Robb Weir tells it as a moment on stage: playing the Jailbreak in Rome, he looked out into the audience and saw the Tygers' own manager from the late seventies standing there.
Albums
The fourteenth studio album and the first since Bloodlines (2023). Mighty Music issues it internationally on 11 September 2026 as PMZ437CD, and Marquee Inc. in Japan on 9 September as MICP-12044. It is the first studio record to feature guitarist John Foottit, who joined in January 2026.
A live album recorded at The Patriot Club in Wales in 2023 and released on 26 April 2024. The band describes the set as drawing on tracks from across the decades, and it places the 1980s material beside recent songs. "Gangland" and "Keeping Me Alive" previewed it.
The thirteenth studio album, released by Mighty Music on 5 May 2023 as PMZ390CD. Ten songs run from "Edge of the World" to "Making All The Rules", among them "A New Heartbeat", which had already given the previous year's EP its title.
A four-track EP issued on 22 April 2022: the title song and "Red Mist" alongside 2022 re-recordings of "Fireclown" and "Killers", both of which come from the 1980 debut Wild Cat.
The twelfth studio album, released by Mighty Music on 22 November 2019. Eleven songs running from "Worlds Apart" to "Sail On".
The eleventh studio album, self-titled, issued by Mighty Music on 21 October 2016 as PMZ 200. Eleven songs, opening with the advance track "Only the Brave".
The tenth studio album, released by Rocksector Records on 24 September 2012. Target Records reissued it in 2020 with bonus tracks.
The ninth studio album, issued by Live Wire Records in 2008. At the end of 2024 it was reissued with a new remix by Marco Angioni and new sleeve art by Andy Pilkington, and that reissue is what the player on this page carries.
A live album released by Angel Air Records on 6 June 2005 as SJPCD206. The band's own discography lists it under a different title, Live In Dokkum, Holland '05. Three bonus studio recordings close the disc.
A live album recorded in Carlisle, England and released by Angel Air Records in 2003. Its sixteen tracks set songs from the then-current Noises From the Cathouse beside the 1980s repertoire.
A studio album issued by Communique Records. The band's own discography dates it to 2003 and this page follows that; MusicBrainz says 2004. The player here is the 2016 Angel Air reissue, which adds three bonus tracks.
A live album from the band's 1999 performance at Wacken Open Air, issued by Spitfire Records in 2001. The band's own discography lists it as Live At Wacken, Germany '99.
A live album from the band's 1981 concert at Rock City in Nottingham, issued by Spitfire Records in 2001. It documents the Spellbound-era line-up, with John Sykes on guitar, and was reissued in 2018 as Hellbound Spellbound Live 1981. It is on no streaming service, so this page leads with the sleeve.
The studio album that broke the long silence after the 1980s split, released by Z Records in 2001. It is the first record of the band Robb Weir restarted.
The last studio album of the band's first run, issued by Zebra Records in 1987 as ZEB 10. Founder Robb Weir had already left, and the band stopped after it.
A studio album released by Music for Nations in 1985 as MFN 50, and the first the band made without founder Robb Weir. Victor issued the Japanese edition on 21 January 1986 as VDP-1066.
The fourth studio album, issued by MCA Records in 1982 as MCF 3150. It is the last with John Sykes, and its eleven tracks include the cover "Love Potion No. 9".
The third studio album, released by MCA Records on 3 November 1981 as MCF 3123 — barely seven months after Spellbound.
The second studio album, released by MCA Records on 10 April 1981 as MCF 3104. It is the first with the new line-up: John Sykes on guitar and Jon Deverill on vocals.
The debut album, released by MCA Records in 1980. It was made by the four-piece of Jess Cox (vocals), Robb Weir (guitar), Richard "Rocky" Laws (bass) and Brian "Big" Dick (drums). It is on no streaming service, so this page leads with the sleeve.