WITH ROBB WEIR

for him, because he would normally do something a bit more extreme. So, I called him up to establish a line of communication and he’s a lovely fellow, such a gentleman. He’s invited me over to his house in which he lives on the edge of a forest, which he also owns. Apparently, when you walk through the forest, you come out at a beach and that’s his beach as well. I can’t wait to go.” It seems like a hard rock fairy tale of musical magic that Madsen has weaved across these new tracks as a spellbound Weir tells me: “What he did was take our clean guitar tracks, and he played them through his stack of amplifiers and got a guitar sound that he liked. And he’s mixed the two sounds together. So, it’s an absolute wall of guitars.”

Robb is enthusiastically proud of the overall results as he opens up on the sequencing process: “A New Heartbeat - from their ‘22 EP - is on the album. But the album for the UK and the European market has ten tracks on it. For Japan, and The States, it has eleven tracks. We recorded twelve tracks for the album. So, there’s another track and all of them were fighting to stay on the record. I have, in years gone by, gone out and bought an album by a great band, come home, put it on, played it and there’s about three great tracks on the album and the rest are kind of OK.” Weir steps up this comparison with his thoughts on Bloodlines: “But the difference with our own and, of course, I’m going to say this, but I truly believe it, if you asked me to pick and play my favourite track, honestly, I couldn’t, as every track stands up! It really, really does. I’m just so proud of it. We’ve had some amazing feedback from the first single, Edge Of The World, which is the opening track of the new album” It could rightly be said that this settled Tygers line up is on the edge of something even bigger in their rollercoaster career. However, with a well-earned legend, what’s the state of relations with the many previous band members?

Robb beams from ear to ear when I mention John Sykes: “John and I speak to each other about four times a year via email. He’s a lovely, lovely man. But, by god I’ve tried to coax him to release product. I’ve put him in touch with our record company, to get his album out that he’s got and hasn’t been released. Unless I got on a plane went across there and shook him... John and I used to room together when we were touring. We were quite good buddies and got up to all sorts of naughty and bad things, but we will not go there...,” chuckles a wistful Robb Weir who is relishing the prospect of going out and playing shows with a, possibly, recent career best album to unleash. Now, that’s a Tyger feat to roar about.