Big Sexy Noise – Tenebrous Liar – Coventry – Live Review

Big Sexy Noise – Tenebrous Liar – The Tin Music and Arts Coventry – 29th January 2026

It’s independent venue week and Coventry is buzzing with live music. Fighting Boredom have come to the Tin at the canal basin to see a true underground rock star. The fact that Lydia Lunch is in Coventry and about to play a gig with the band she formed with James Johnson is both unbelievable and astounding. Last week I didn’t think I’d be able to make it even though, as the Photographer pointed out ‘ You’ve been harping on about it for weeks!’ but in the end I prevailed and here we are, albeit just before the support band comes onstage. There’s loads of people here and even though I know a fair few there are definitely some who have travelled. To say we are looking forward to this one is an understatement.

I say hello to people and buy the Photographer a drink. I’m excited about this gig, I don’t really know what to expect. But I’m hoping for excellence. Tenebrous Liar are first on and go straight into a chugging steady beat with heavy distorted bass and low down guitars. The sound is earthy and slow with lot’s of space for the music to breath, it sounds menacing and once the vocals start it sounds even more so. They are low and heartfelt and as they get stronger the music gets louder and stronger too. It pauses then carries on. The groove is relentless and low down. The singer plays his guitar and focuses on the mic as he sings, cool as. The bassist moves around, jerking and dancing to the music. The drummer keeps it all going, no frills, just a cool hard beat and the second guitarist sways gently, she stands, barely breaking a sweat making the music move. They make the sound bigger and stronger but then just stop.

They start a slow moving tune, it’s gentler than the last one, soft bass leads the way and the singing is low and gravelly, the drums are hit hard but slow and spacious, they carry the groove on and the singer smashes into his guitar, reverb and tremolo arm making weird, jarring noises over the groove then it sinks back to the groove again. They make an epic sound but underneath there’s a real vulnerability to the sound, the music has a fragile and brittle core which makes the sound even better. It’s emotional and deep as well as being repetitive and hard. The beat and backbone of the song goes on as the singer throws shapes with his guitar, up in the air and around the stage making some excellent noises with it as it swings.

They swap to a cold, slow drum beat with extended fuzzed out bass notes, heavy and slow which slams into thrashing noise then back to the slow. They’re tight but the music’s loose, do you get me? The band carry on as the singer sounds more and more desperate and lost, his guitar feeding back and he is kneeling on the floor, howling in despair.

That’s how they finish, the singer hangs his guitar from a ceiling cable and drags his phone up and down the strings creating more chaos as the band continues, heavy, solid and cool. The cable breaks and the guitar drops and the band slides to a halt. An excellent set.

Big Sexy Noise are onstage before I notice, there are old friends here that I haven’t spoken to for a while and all of a sudden I look up and there she is, just like the rest of us, older and no wiser. She introduces the band, calls us Motherfuckers a lot and tells the Photographer off, as well as making her distaste for mobile phone filming very clear too ‘Don’t make me hurt you’ Her voice is the same as it ever was, measured and clear over the top of James’ guitar. Bottom line is, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same for a fair few of this crowd, Lydia Fucking Lunch is in the same room as me, in my hometown and I feel brilliant. Ian’s drums hammer out a rock’n’roll blues punk rhythm and then the guitar, man, the guitar. James Johnston plays the guitar like a demon swamp blues, rockabilly smashed up God. His distorted chords sound like about three guitars in one and Jesus, it’s both big, sexy and noise. Lydia Lunch knows how to pick her band, this is incredible. She’s smiling over at him as she sings, she likes that guitar as much as we do. Lydia’s hair is dark, I’m probably not allowed to say goth, but she suits it. James’ hair is white, long and somewhat reminiscent of Bryan Gregory (thanks Dave) he goes into a gigantic riff as Lydia watches, the drums batter out brutal primal Rock’n’Roll and we retreat deep into the swamp as Lydia’s drawl sings out over it all, bringing focus to the chaos. James is grinning as the drums just keep on beating. It’s a blues ridden swamp crawling rockabilly primitive groove and it’s fuzzed out to Hell and back too.

‘Ballin’ the Jack Motherfuckers’ the guitar is even louder and harder, it lowers into the blues as it would have been played by the desperate and damned and Lydia sings, it sounds utterly perfect. The guitar is held back and we all know it’s going to rise up again and when it does it kills again. Then it drops again into a sleazy, sweaty guitar and vocal, it sounds totally feral. Lydia is brilliant, she thrives on this noisy chaos. She talks about the loser men that all ladies know as she introduces ‘Your love don’t pay my fucking rent!’ A grotty, hillbilly guitar riff and a slow drawl vocal, this is hard luck blues and then hard Rock’n’Roll. Why isn’t there more music like this. Probably because James can only be in one place at a time. She talks and then the noise explodes again. Big Sexy Noise, oh fucking yes.

The guitar flows out, fuzzy and loose, Lydia sings over just the guitar and it’s almost precious, then the drums start again and it is perfect primitive rockabilly, hard as nails but it swings too, you try and keep your hips still listening to this shit. ‘Trust the Witch’ has slow drums and high scratchy guitar, a lazy verging on angry vocal, and the guitar holds back for the first time tonight as the drums and vocal carry the song. I move closer to the stage just to hear that guitar louder and watch them clearer. Lydia tells us to keep our phones in our pockets, don’t make me hurt you. Then a huge noise, an incessant groove and it’s like Suicide are back but with guitars instead of the synths, it calms for the vocal and then rises again. James and the drummer are reading each others mind, they’ve played together for so long that it’s intuition between the two of them, the Gallon Drunk sensibility bleeding into the Big Sexy Noise. Lydia tells stories and makes us laugh, the guitar slaughters us again and again and the drums keep our hips moving to the beat.

‘Kill yourselves ‘cos your gonna die anyway.’ Heavy beat and feedback, glorious. Thrash then grooves straight off Jimi Hendrix, Lydia is storytelling and the music is dirty, dark and blooded. This is rock’n’roll for the dispossessed, the drunken and lost, the disappointed and the last of the street tribes. If this isn’t Punk then I have no idea what is. They finish with a guitar so filthy that you can feel the grime clinging to your skin, singing straight from Lydia’s heart and a beat so primal you can smell the dinosaurs, a whirling dervish of Rock’n’Roll goodness. I’m speechless, what a gig.

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Big Sexy Noise