I tried to warn you. Nick Cave and his crew of miscreants WILL STOP AT NOTHING! Let me make this abundantly clear: this album comes nearly 40 years into Nick Cave’s career and these old wolves are still foaming at the mouth to rip off your limbs and party in your blood. Though the rock legend requires little if any introduction, this Aussie’s prolific career ranges from early days as a murder ballad songwriter, to score composer (The Assassination of Jesse James), to novelist (The Death of Bunny Munro), and now… in what should be the twilight of their careers… Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos, weighing in at an average age of about 50, give us their most psychedelic and hard hitting work, period.

Grinderman 2 plays somewhat like an extension of the original effort which was a pivotal turn for the foursome, so its worth delineating how it arose. The members, all originally Bad Seeds, began Grinderman in 2006 as a side project with a distinctly rawer sound, supposedly due to Cave’s rudimentary guitar capabilities (traditionally a piano player). Grinderman, released in 2007, was a runaway train- trippier than the Seeds, and down right ridiculous in its loose approach, while maintaining a commanding aggression. The album’s focal point, “No Pussy Blues,” was a declaration from Cave, “It is the child standing goggle-eyed at the cake shop window, as the shop-owner, in his plastic sleeves, barricades the door and turns the sign to “CLOSED”. It is the howl in the dark of the Everyman.” Watch their performance of ” Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)” on Later… With Jools Holland for visual digestion of this concept.

Now Cave returns as the psych rock master of twisted, unsatiated, Nabokovian desires. He sizes up a tiny hellion on the single, “Heathen Child,” detailing, “She’s got a little powder/She’s got a little gun/She’s got a little poison, got a little gun/She’s sitting in the bathtub sucker her thumb” (hilariously literal interpretation above). We’ve heard him discuss a similarly destructive nymphet on his better known, “The Curse of Millhaven.”

Perhaps the only real divergence of Grinderman 2 is it’s more troubled, warped, longing approach to getting busy, where Grinderman used testosterone-driven outrage to make its demands for sexuality. The first album felt like a battle cry for all muted carnality, and now Cave has raided the sealed cages. On “When My Baby Comes,” Cave begs from the perspective of a psych ward patient for his lover to visit, “Just how long you gonna be my baby? Til you come.” The grunge groove that hits is soaring, fueled and entrancing, winding out while the full band repeats, “Where did you go in my house?”  On earlier track, “Worm Tamer,” Cave tastes the lustful poison of a serpent-like lover on his tongue, and concludes with the lamentation, “I guess I’ve loved you far too long (far too long!).” These are twisted tales of passion. Though no longer banging on the doors for entry, his torment persists pungently in fresh confusion, as Cave continues to take on the impossible and unbearable power of nubile temptresses. He’s the wolf in the decadent chambers; the beast in the deceitful gardens; the Grinderman.

- matthew hunt