Pig Iron

Formed in November 1999, the band still features the three original members: “Big” Rich Hind on bass and vocals, Neil “Mad bad” Macnab on guitar and vocals, and Pete “Yeti” Rutherford on drums and samples.
The band’s name comes from the steel industry: when Iron is first smelted from ore it is cast into ingots using moulds laid out like piglets suckling, hence pig iron. Blues fans will also recognise the phrase from the Lead Belly song, Rock Island Line.
The covers set is focused on British hard rock and heavy metal from the late 60’s onwards, though mostly from the 70’s and 80’s the heydays of “new wave of British heavy metal”. A typical gig features songs from bands including Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Status Quo, Budgie, Therapy? and Thin Lizzy.
Unfortunately thanks to lock-down we were not able to play our planned 20th (or 21st ) anniversary gig, so we celebrated with some on-line jam sessions instead via a wonderful software application called Jamulus. This inspired us to start writing some original material and in November 2021, the month of our 22nd anniversary, we released “Angels of Iron” as a digital single and our first full album of original material is due for release in June 2022.