Joy Division's "Eternal" Boxed Set Chronicles Band's Evolution Across 16 Concerts

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Sep 25, 2026 8:00am PT

Joy Division’s Massive ‘Eternal’ Boxed Set Documents the Band’s Brilliant Evolution Over 16 Concerts: Album Review

By Jem Aswad

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Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

jemaswad

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Few artists have cast as vast an influence in as short a time as Joy Division , the pioneering Manchester post-punk quartet whose dark, haunting songs and sound helped shape many genres and scenes that were to follow, from the obvious — indie-rock, goth, industrial — to the less-obvious, like electronic dance music.

Yet the fact that the group is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this fall — along with New Order , the band Joy Division became after singer Ian Curtis’ suicide in May of 1980 — is as ironic as the fact that the group is more widely known for T-shirts bearing the cover of its first album, “Unknown Pleasures,” than its music. Joy Division were considered post-rock or even anti -rock at the time, and they vehemently spurned cliches — at the end of the group’s live cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” Curtis says with withering disdain, “You should hear our version of ‘Louie Louie’ — woah.” While the punk rock scene that spawned them was about overthrowing the bloated rock royalty of the ‘60s and mid-‘70s, punk was still showy and flamboyant; Joy Division were nothing of the sort. They wore dark, businesslike clothes, had a dark demeanor, a dark sound and even darker lyrics.

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_Originally reported by [Variety Music](https://variety.com/2026/music/reviews/joy-division-eternal-live-boxed-set-album-review-1236875250/)._