Melbourne, Australia · art rock · gothic rock

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

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Six decades of sermon, murder ballad and grief turned into something closer to communion — a band that can level a field with one held organ note.

Cave and Mick Harvey met at a Melbourne boarding school and played together in the Birthday Party, which broke up in 1983 after clashes between Cave's and Rowland S. Howard's songwriting directions. The Bad Seeds began that year in London as a backing band for a planned Cave solo project, with Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Barry Adamson and JG Thirlwell, recording early sessions with producer Flood.

The lineup has turned over repeatedly since, drawing musicians from several countries. The current group includes Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn P. Casey, guitarist George Vjestica, keyboardist and percussionist Larry Mullins, and drummers Thomas Wydler and Jim Sclavunos, alongside Cave. Ellis has been Cave's principal writing partner for the past two decades, following Harvey's departure from the band in 2009.

Their debut, From Her to Eternity (1984), drew on post-punk, blues and gothic rock. The sound softened through The Good Son (1990) and The Boatman's Call (1997), then broadened again after Harvey left into the electronic and ambient textures of the trilogy Push the Sky Away (2013), Skeleton Tree (2016) and Ghosteen (2019), followed by Wild God in 2024.

Cave's writing draws on scripture and the murder ballad tradition, with the later records built around direct reckonings with bereavement. Across eighteen studio albums and constant international touring, the band's live shows are built on the contrast between quiet, sustained passages and Cave's habit of pressing into the crowd.

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