Eternal by Joy Division: An astonishing document of the greatest live act of them all

What is left to be said about Joy Division? What is left to be heard of Joy Division? Well, plenty on both fronts, as it happens.

This is the first collection of their live recordings, which includes 14 full gigs (including their final one at Birmingham High Hall), plus two DVDs of live footage. What might appear to be a mere gathering of unreleased material and restorations for fan completist, is in fact one of the most astonishing releases of the year. The passing of music time, the sheer weight of words about the same acts in the music canon can bring a fatigue; this slaps you around the face with just how good Joy Division were. The best.

In their short lifespan, effectively three years up until Ian Curtis suicide in May 1980, they went at pace, writing and recording songs at a clip, of outstanding quality without them stopping to analyse it; it just happened, uncannily. It resulted in two albums which have become revered classics, Unknown Pleasures and Closer, both recorded by Manchester icon Martin Hannett.

Yet these albums were scorned within the band; famously Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook hated the spectral sound of Unknown Pleasures when their music was so heavy and Curtis called Closer “a disaster.” Largely thanks to the subsequent words of Hannett and Tony Wilson, the bands complaints were dismissed as ignorance – “They didn’t have a clue,” sniffed Hannett, while Wilson simply said, “Musicians know fuck all about music.”

Joy Division

Martin O'Neill

Listening to these recordings though, and seeing the footage, it does suddenly occur to you that the band may have been right. They are phenomenal live. Machine-like, punishingly heavy, it is angular, factory music (no pun intended), only with a Krautrock propulsion and Hooky’s sinuous high bass, which elevates it from mere punk into something urgent, compelling, serious.

And then there is Curtis.

Watching the shows on the DVD is to be shocked anew by his performances. He is other-wordly. The famous flailing marionette dancing, once described as like “someone trying to jump out of their own skin,” and “messianic” here presented in the context of full shows and it is utterly thrilling/terrifying. Like he’s possessed. Like he’s being ravaged by inner demons before your eyes. It gives you bone-deep horrors just to watch it.

The footage of him playing Wilderness at Plan K in Brussels is like watching Saint Sebastian being shot with arrows of his own making. It’s like he’s between two worlds. During Colony he sings “God in his wisdom took you by the hand, God in his wisdom made you understand,” and these aren’t consoling words.

Eternal is not nice or consoling, but it shows one of the very few bands to make rock music high art – and, unnervingly, it looks like they were doing it by channelling something beyond their control. Listen if you dare.