Eterna @ Club Cheek, London (Live Review)
- Published in Live
Eterna
Club Cheek
Words & Pics by Captain Stavros
Baptised in Feedback, Crowned in Fog
This one goes out to the accommodating Kester at Club Cheek; the quietly benevolent doorman who let us duck past the velvet rope and into the pulsing furnace of Eterna’s sold-out July set. Without that favour, we’d have been stuck outside, ears pressed to brick.
The night was sweltering. One of those scorched evenings where the pavement sizzles and every underground stop feels like a war crime. We half-considered swimming the Thames just to cool off. But south of the river, Club Cheek; a fresh, labyrinthine venue tucked under Brixton's railway arches, offered shelter and sound. Think Scala with a lower ceiling and a better soul. There’s viewing from every angle, beams overhead for hanging lights or people (depending on the gig), and a strobed-out, giddy laser show that looked like someone let Aphex Twin into the lighting booth.
At first, it was a handful of us rattling around the place. Then, like a fever dream, it filled. Fast. “I think they’re mainly friends,” Will, an artist/poet, tells us between bands. He’d clocked my book (Les Paul’s autobiography, alright, mate?) and leaned in conspiratorially. But if this was just mates of the band, they must’ve all skipped work, dumped dates, and left boiling curry on the stove to get here. That’s commitment. Try getting a Londoner to reply to a group chat, let alone turn up en masse.
And what a crowd it was. Not a single mobile screen lit up. No shouty pints-over-the-music merchants. Just pure attention. During the breaks between bands, strangers chatted, introduced themselves, asked what brought you here; like a past life version of the scene had been summoned up for one night only. Maybe it’s a south-of-the-river thing. Whatever it was, it worked.
Then came Eterna.
Fresh off their debut LP Debunker via the ever-ascendant Section1 label, the band emerged in silhouette. Their frontman hunched over a cabinet of speakers where his keyboard was balanced like a tray of drinks on a wobbling tray table. The moment they started playing, the air changed. Smells of sweat, smoke and spilled lager mixed with the deep thrum of synths and guitar. People started to push forward, yelling “LOUDER” as if it were a request and not a warning. Like sardines, both live and tinned.
Eterna draw comparisons to the more devotional end of shoegaze; think Slowdive’s early heartbreak colliding with the shadowy electronics of Seefeel. But they’re not interested in nostalgia. They take their time, slow-cooking every build-up until it simmers under your skin. No bravado. No posturing. Just the steady work of a band who trust the atmosphere to speak for itself.
A personal highlight? That moment in the opener where each instrument, each in its own alternate tuning, somehow met in the same key. A shimmering, accidental unity. A sonic car crash that healed itself mid-collision. It was either divine intervention or finely tuned chaos. Either way, it landed like thunder.
They played late. And nobody cared. Club Cheek, cradled under Brixton’s railways, didn’t need to worry about noise complaints; the trains overhead drowned out even the loudest cymbal crashes. But that didn’t stop the band from trying to outdo them. They very nearly did.
Eterna didn’t just fill a venue. They transformed it. For one night, the usual fatigue and cynicism of London’s live scene evaporated. In its place: a sweaty, hypnotised room, moving as one. If this is what the post-Debunker era looks like for Eterna, the rest of us better catch up. Fast.
