THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For the best part of two decades, eminent music photographer Steve Gullick has steered this artful, brutal, yet simultaneously beautiful musical project through to the release of its ninth album.
Following the band’s last full length The Cut (2017), Gullick retreated from full-on amplification and made two critically acclaimed, cinematic, classical tinged albums with James Johnston (Gallon Drunk / PJ Harvey / Bad Seeds): We Travel Time (2021) and Everybody’s Sunset (2022) In January 2023, Gullick and bass player Brendan Casey got together to discuss the next steps in the life of Tenebrous Liar. Both had a desire to invite some fresh blood to join them and drummer Ben Edgar, in order to expand the sound and axis the trio had created with The Cut. Multi-instrumentalist Aimee Lovric was asked to join and accepted. The quartet got to work immediately, rehearsing the live set quickly developed into the creation of new material. “Aimee’s guitar work is really soulful and freeing,” says Gullick. “Aong with Bren and Ben, she keeps everything solid allowing me the space to really let rip.”
Hell Never Called pulls together a mix of songs built from rehearsal room improvisations, meticulously rehearsed studio recordings and home recordings. “When we started writing, I was obsessed with the 1970 Dutch concert film Stamping Ground,” says Gullick. “It’s visually spellbinding and the performances are incredible. I just couldn’t get Jefferson Airplane and Santana out of my head.
“The Waves is a rehearsal-room improvisation, I asked Bren to pluck a solid original baseline out of thin air, I’m always putting him on the spot — ‘something as iconic as Pop Crimes’… ‘Think Jah Wobble meets Martyn P Casey’. He delivered. Aimee gave it soul and Ben’s drums kept it rolling. Aimee told me she’d taken to singing along to it in the car, so we added her surreal vocal. I’m massively happy to have her voice on this album.
“What Am I? has actually been knocking around for years. It was first recorded in 2012 during our End Of The Road album session. We regularly played it live, but it never felt right for a record until now. Aimee was on the studio grand piano, we started playing the song, tentatively listening to each other. We’d never played it this way before. I think we were all rather taken aback by what we were hearing. I did a rough mix and sent it to my friend, the composer Anthony Baden Saggers (Stray Ghost), he loved it and instantly offered to add strings.
“Tattooed Hearts evolved from a one-minute demo on which I was trying to emulate the guitar playing of Mick Turner. The song felt special; it took on new meaning through the death of a good friend. As a band we evolved it into a nine-minute, two-chord monster that builds into an apocalyptic epic sing-along, then collapses to close the album.”
