LIARS

Liars are an experimental rock group formed in Brooklyn in 2000, long associated with the restless edge of New York's post-punk revival while never sitting comfortably inside it. From the start, the project treated rock, rhythm and studio process as unstable materials, moving from wiry dance-punk into ritual percussion, noise, electronics and stark song forms.

The band's early line-up is most commonly associated with Angus Andrew, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross, with Andrew remaining the central and continuous figure across the project's different phases. That continuity matters because Liars' catalogue is less a fixed band identity than a sequence of sharp reinventions held together by Andrew's voice, mood and appetite for formal disruption.

Their debut album, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, arrived in the first wave of early-2000s New York guitar music, but it already stood apart from cleaner revivalist narratives. The record drew on dance-punk and no wave energy, yet its grooves felt abrasive, unstable and slightly hostile to easy consumption.

Rather than consolidate that sound, Liars swerved hard on their next major statement. They Were Wrong, So We Drowned pushed toward a more fractured, percussive and conceptual language, often discussed in connection with themes of folklore, hysteria and collective ritual. It was the kind of move that established Liars as a band more interested in transformation than scene loyalty.

That instinct reached a particularly celebrated form on Drum's Not Dead, a record built around rhythm, atmosphere and internal mythology. Its emphasis on drumming, repetition and texture gave Liars a new kind of physicality, one that connected art-rock abstraction to something bodily and ceremonial.

By the time of Liars, the group had shifted again, bringing a more direct but still damaged rock attack into focus. The album is often treated as one of the key entries in their discography because it condensed many of their strengths: tension, noise, repetition and a refusal to let hooks settle into comfort.

Sisterworld expanded that language into something heavier and more psychologically claustrophobic. Across this period, Liars became known for records that felt self-contained and world-building, each one setting its own rules rather than extending a stable house style.

The project later moved further into electronic and synthetic territory. Albums such as WIXIW and Mess explored programmed rhythm, minimal structures and a colder, more dislocated emotional register, without abandoning the unease and volatility that had defined the band from the beginning.

That electronic turn did not erase Liars' rock lineage; instead, it highlighted how central rhythm and texture had always been to the group. Even when guitars receded, the music still carried the same interest in friction, repetition and destabilised form.

As the project evolved, Angus Andrew increasingly became Liars' sole constant presence, and later releases reflected that shift in structure. TFCF and subsequent work presented a more solitary frame, but the core Liars sensibility remained intact: oblique songwriting, emotional abrasion and a refusal to repeat past formulas too neatly.

Liars' place in 21st-century underground music rests partly on that refusal. They emerged alongside bands often grouped under dance-punk or post-punk revival, yet their catalogue consistently exceeded those labels, touching experimental rock, industrial textures, electronic minimalism and performance-minded art music.

Within a broad breakbeat and bass-aware editorial context, Liars matter less as a genre act than as a neighboring force in rhythm-led experimental music. Their work repeatedly returned to drums, pulse, tension and physical sound design, making them a useful reference point for listeners interested in the outer edges where punk-funk, noise and electronic thinking meet.

More than two decades on, Liars remain identified with reinvention as method. Few groups from their generation moved so freely between danceable abrasion, ritualist percussion, damaged rock and skeletal electronics while keeping such a distinct emotional signature.