Their sound struck as somewhere between heavy rock and industrial lament. Tracks like ‘When the Kissing Had to Stop’ and ‘Shapeshifting’ pulsed through the space, reverberating against the ornate walls of the venue. It felt less like a warm-up and more like an invocation or a digital exorcism, preparing the crowd for Ethel Cain’s arrival. By the time their final song dissolved into static, the audience was already suspended in a dreamlike unease, perfectly primed for what followed.
When Ethel Cain emerged from the shadows of the intimate Eventim Apollo stage, the room shifted into something closer to a chapel than a concert hall. For an hour prior, a tall cross statue held its gait right in the centre of the stage, just where the light would hit if this were really in a church. The lighting (soft and harrowing, bleeding in dusky hues of red and blue) painted her in silhouette, her band tucked in near-darkness behind her. What followed wasn’t a performance in the traditional sense, but a slow, immersive descent into the world of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’. What immediately sprang to mind was a Southern Gothic sermon where beauty and terror coexist in uneasy harmony.
Cain began the set with ‘Willougby’s Theme’, the audience’s silence rising like smoke through the vast hall. There was no dramatic entrance. It was completely without spectacle. Halfway through she appeared; still, composed, and almost spectral. Her restraint was mesmerising. Through much of the evening she remained quietly to herself, swaying gently as she delivered lines that felt more like confession than performance. Cheers lifted the roof as ‘Janie’ and ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ were introduced, as this meant Ethel Cain would finally begin singing. When she murmured “It was ugly, like what they all did to me / And they did to me what I wouldn’t do to anyone”, during ‘Nettles’, the audience fell into a reverent hush.
The lighting throughout was moody and unrelenting, as if a character in itself. During ‘Waco, Texas’, the stage glowed with a bruised amber haze, as if the ghost of a sunset hung just out of reach. Incorporating ‘House in Nebraska’ into the outro, the performance felt like remembering harder times through rose tinted glasses. Cain’s voice, cavernous and trembling, filled every inch of the venue. It was in these quieter moments that her storytelling reached its most devastating power. You could feel the crowd hold their breath, suspended in her world where love and loss blur into the same aching memory.
There was a fragile intensity in the air, broken only when reality intruded. Several fans fainted during the show, possibly due to a combination of heat, emotion, and the sheer spiritual weight of the night. Each time, Cain stopped mid-song to call for help. Though it meant she had to skip multiple outros during the set, her concern was immediate and unfeigned. She didn’t express irritation or distance; instead, she watched closely until each person was safely attended to, before quietly resuming where she left off. It was a small, human act that spoke volumes about her empathy and composure amid chaos.
It wasn’t until the final stretch that Cain began to loosen her reserve. During ‘Crush’, she looked out into the crowd for more than a few fleeting seconds, smiling faintly as fans sang every word back to her: “I owe you a black eye and two kisses, tell me when you wanna come and get ‘em”. This lyric landed like a prayer and a warning, echoing through the Apollo’s vaulted ceiling, louder than anything else heard that night. By the time she reached ‘American Teenager’, the atmosphere had shifted entirely. The ending was no longer haunting, but communal, her devotees swaying with arms outstretched as if in collective absolution.
If the beginning of the night felt like a funeral, the ending felt like resurrection. The cheers that followed her extended outro were thunderous. This felt not only in adoration, but gratitude. In that moment, she wasn’t the preacher’s daughter or the tragic myth she embodies in her songs. She was simply Hayden, an artist who had turned trauma and faith into transcendence.
Ethel Cain’s show was not designed for spectacle. It was slow, deliberate, and achingly human. Each note seemed to linger in the air long after it ended, an echo of something divine and broken. The Eventim Apollo has never felt so intimate, or so haunted.
Ellie McWilliam