News.com.au reported that the 46-year-old Aussie has been writing music since he joined the Neighbours’ cast in 1985, but kept his music to himself as other Ramsay Street stars made the crossover from acting to the charts.

“Every time I did an interview in the late `80s and early `90s and mentioned I made music the journalist would roll their eyes and go ‘Not another f@#!ing actor who’s going to release a single’,” he said. ”I would extremely apologetically say ‘No, of course not! I’d never inflict that on the world’. I allowed that narrow minded belief to drive everything for years. Although maybe people were just sick of actors making music...

“As we all know back in the `80s a couple of other actors I worked with all went out and released singles, then a few more did... I was very conscious of not wanting to seem like I was jumping on the bandwagon or annoy people because I wanted to do music myself. So I’d make music but, in my loungeroom, or playing with friends, it wasn’t public.”

That all changed when he landed a role working alongside Michael Barker - who has drummed for Split Enz and the John Butler Trio - in the Melbourne Theatre Company performance of the Tim Finn musical Poor Boy.

“Michael said ‘What are you doing to yourself?’ and suddenly I was confronted by all that historical enthusiasm I’d felt about music in my teens and early 20s that I allowed to be stifled. He told me I was doing myself a damage by repressing my music. Michael told me ‘F@#! the critics’.

“Getting it out, either out of my head, or out publicly, was really important for me to move on…If people don’t like it, I don’t care. I’m at that point now. I want people to like it, obviously, but I don’t care about my reaction if they don’t like it.”

Pearce is planning small showcase gigs in Australia in November and is recording a series of videos for tracks from the album, however a major tour isn’t on the cards.

Storm will be released on August 22.

Image via Getty