Double Eyelid: The Tell-Tale Heart — Poe’s Classic Story Gets a Musical Retake
28 October 2025
First published in 1843, “The Tell-Tale Heart” ranks among Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous and enduring stories. A popular anthology inclusion, it has also been adapted numerous times for radio shows, films, and podcasts. Then there are all those Tell-Tale Heart audiobooks—the story has already had so much mileage, it’s hard to imagine anyone breathing some new life into it and producing something a little different, yet, this year, somebody has. Ian Revell from Double Eyelid (a glam, goth, gutter band) has produced a musical version of “The Tell-Tale Heart”.* It’s an interesting hybrid that’s a cross between a standard music EP and an audiobook.
The story of a madman who murders the old man who shares his home, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of the first horror stories I read as a child. I loved it then, and I still do now, so when I recently received a heads-up about Double Eyelid’s new interpretation, I couldn’t wait to check it out.
Although there are other options, I decided to listen to “The Tell-Tale Heart” at Bandcamp, where it’s possible to stream it for free, or help support the band by buying the digital album as a download—which costs considerably less than a small pizza.
The Tell-Tale Heart: EP Review
Double Eyelid’s “Tell-Tale Heart” is split into four chapters with a combined runtime of just under 21 minutes. The narration alternates between a straight telling of the story—told to creepy backing music—and sung paragraphs, where the instrumental accompaniment often becomes a little more pronounced. Ian’s voice, both sung and spoken, lends itself well to the story. The backing music and brief instrumental interludes are an equally good match, and as the story switches from a more traditional telling to a musical one, I couldn’t help making comparisons to Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, which has a similar alternation.
Even without the music, Ian’s telling of the story has much going for it. Like a good actor, he changes the timber and volume of his voice as the story dictates, at times becoming triumphant, breathless, or adopting a rushed or crazed speech pattern as the character in the story becomes more unhinged and out of control.
As for the music, a mix of instruments is involved, and Ian plays them all. I found some of the squeaky violin sections a little reminiscent of the ones in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho film, while sections involving tinkling piano keys effectively convey the effect of the seconds passing, and, combined with bass strings, provide an ominous countdown to the end of the old man’s life. These coupled with effective use of drums and ominous-sounding synthesizers, do a great job of bringing the story to life and providing a musical representation of the narrator’s mood. I’m not sufficiently musically qualified to comment further in this area, but, as far as I am concerned, everything strikes a favorable chord.
Having listened to and enjoyed the Double Eyelid musical adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart, I became curious about a few things, such as the inspiration behind the EP, any challenges Ian had to overcome while adapting Poe’s story to music, and—because it’s such an unusual project—what the response has been like so far. The only way to find out the answers to these questions was to contact Ian and ask him, so that’s what I did, and he kindly furnished me with some answers.
Interview with Ian Revell from Double Eyelid
What attracted you to the story?
I read the Tell-Tale Heart as a child and was enthralled by it. It imprinted on my brain the way good stories do when you’re young.
What encouraged you to adapt The Tell-Tale Heart to music?
This all started when I heard someone else’s work. Back in 2011-2012, I was in an online community of musicians. Darren [Roberts] is based in the UK, he posted a piece that really was just one riff, with this upbeat industrial drumming going on in the background. I loved it and right away started singing a melody in the gaps that he left. Wrote down some lyrics, just rough ideas, reached out to him and said – hey, do you mind if I try recording a vocal to this, I’ve got a great idea for it! But he really didn’t want me to … and so that was that, for a while.
But the combination of his riff and my melody stuck with me and I couldn’t shake it. And it was maybe around 2017, 2018 or so that it morphed into this other idea. I’m actually not sure what drove that, and I don’t remember the specific moment it hit me or anything. But at the time I was listening to a lot of Sex Gang Children-—the singer, Andi Sex Gang, has this singing style that often shifts between spoken word and very melodic singing. He also did an adaptation of Dracula — which was more of a straight reading, but did have music here and there. And we did a live score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. So there were a few influences like that floating around I guess.
So around that time I roughly sketched out how it might go, with some significant gaps, but I wrote most of the sung verses. And then it just kind of sat on the shelf for ages.
Until for a bunch of reasons around April 2025 I decided it was time to take it on—so then I tracked Darren down and explained what I was thinking, we agreed on how to credit him and share royalties and so forth, and I went full-bore into it to try and release in October. Which we just barely managed.
How difficult was it to adapt the story?
Because of the way this was written — it was linear writing to accompany a narrative, and so I was recording it a chunk at a time, as I was writing it, which is not normally how you write songs, they’re more circular. Anyways—that approach made it a bit more expedient just for me to do the whole thing myself. This is the first Double Eyelid record I’ve played all the instruments on.
What has the response been like so far?
I’m pleased with the response it’s been getting. Having said that, this is a release that’s been a bit different to promote. Usually, we put out a single and overnight we’re on a bunch of playlists, it’s getting some streams and I feel like ‘cool, this is going over well’. This project is a slower burn because it requires more attention. But I think it will have a pretty good shelf life.
Are there any similar plans in the pipeline?
I have no plans to do anything like this again but if a filmmaker or stage director was interested in making something around this I’d support it. I paused work on an EP of new songs to record The Tell-Tale Heart, and I’ve been getting back to that in the last week or so.
Places to Stream or Download The Tell-Tale Heart EP
Double Eyelid: The Tell-Tale Heart is on all the major streaming platforms, and the band has created a linktree to point people in the right direction: https://linktr.ee/doubleeyelid
For further information about Double Eyelid and its past and upcoming projects, check out the band’s official website: https://www.doubleeyelidmusic.com/
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* Music composed by Ian Revell on a theme by Darren Roberts.