By Hasan Beyaz
Photos by Ryan Coleman
EartH Hackney is a club basement – dark corners, blacked-out walls, the kind of room that feels like it was built for music that doesn't ask permission; 82MAJOR fit it perfectly. The Seoul six-piece – Seongil, Yechan, Seongmo, Seongbin, Seokjoon, and Dogyun – brought their BEBEOM: BE THE TIGER tour to a packed EartH Hackney for the penultimate night of the run.
The opening "Heroes" arrived to immediate shrieks of excitement, and was swiftly followed by "Passport", a track built around global ambition and the idea that seeing them live is worth the journey. In London, it landed as both a boast and a statement of intent.
The set leaned heavily into the group's hip-hop roots, the darker and more aggressive cuts sitting at the centre of the evening. "Choke", "Illegal", and "TAKEOVER" gave the room exactly what it came for – sharp, physical performances with choreography that never felt decorative. "Choke" in particular landed with a cool precision – the group locked in formation, a clean synchronised hand chop that was slick without showboating. The styling matched: distressed denim, leather bombers, studded jackets, a Dodgers cap. It was streetwear-adjacent without tipping into try-hard, which matched the music's own refusal to oversell itself. During "Illegal", the jackets came off to reveal black tanks – the room's reaction was predictable, and entirely justified.
A major deviation from the hip-hop lean was "TROPHY", and it was the night's undisputed peak. The track is a slick, thumping house record, and one the crowd was audibly waiting for. Murmurs of anticipation rippled through the room before it started. What followed justified the wait. The chorus choreography – the group holding themselves rigid, posed like statues, rotating slowly in unison – hit with the kind of unified weight that left the room visibly stunned. It's one of the more inventive boy group choreo moments in recent memory, and live it hit harder than any recorded version online could convey. For the Yechan remix, he stepped behind the decks himself – a rare move, and one that leaned hard into everything EartH Hackney's basement atmosphere had been building towards.
There were technical hiccups along the way. Mics cut intermittently and vocal levels dropped in places, but the moments confirmed what was already apparent: these six are strong vocalists, and they were doing it live. The physicality of the performance took its toll in the best way too. At one point, the group paused and asked the crowd for a breather. "Give me 20 seconds, please." The room obliged, laughing.
The MC moments were just as watchable – a group genuinely experiencing London for the first time. Between them, the group told the crowd that London had only ever existed for them through a TV screen – Premier League football, glimpsed from South Korea.
Canadian member Yechan drew some of the loudest reactions of the night, his name called out repeatedly from the floor. He tells us that they arrived by train that day, and he enjoyed taking in the sights – which led, naturally, to a debate about English breakfast. Baked beans specifically. The crowd went wild, which is a sentence that could only be written about a show in London.
Later, Seongil revealed it was his birthday, and the room took it upon themselves to sort out his celebrations. The consensus: Wetherspoons. He seemed to take the suggestion seriously. When the group asked whether anyone knew Seongil's fanchant – claiming they'd posted it to Instagram – a loaded silence followed. "You guys don't know… Liar! Liar!" The room erupted. The fanchant went ahead anyway. It was the kind of banter that can't be rehearsed, and nobody wanted it to end.