From Her To Eternity

After the Birthday Party ended in a manner similar to a train collision, frontman Nick Cave emerged from the wreckage and hooked up ex-bandmate Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld (on loan from the industrial group Einsturzende Neubauten), Barry Adamson (fresh from Magazine), and the lovely but corpse-pale Anita Lane. Thus the Bad Seeds were born, second only to Cave’s former band in their ability to create a rumbling caterwaul.

What makes the Bad Seeds stand apart, though, are the elements of Delta blues that Cave dredges up from the darkest recesses of his black, black heart – blues unlike any you’ve ever heard before – and his Faulkner-meets-Lovecraft lyrical obsessions.

‘Well of Misery’ shambles along drunkenly and eventually crumbles under its somnambulant pace. On the title track Cave exhorts, begs, and pleads like a whiskey priest begging for forgiveness after a bender while Bargeld’s guitar shrieks and wails like a congregation of devils. Including two of Cave’s more inspired covers – Leonard Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’ and Presley’s ‘In the Ghetto’ – ‘From Her to Eternity’ captures Cave at the noisy intersection between the punk-rock entropy of the birthday party and his later incarnation as the gothic Elvis.