I don't hear music by new artists very much. I hear new albums by old artists, but neither old nor new stuff by new artists. Why? I'm not sure; perhaps I've become disillusioned by what I hear on the radio or on TV or whatever. I think that's only part of it, though, because I feel I automatically shut out new music as "bad" because it makes me feel superior somehow; as though by listening to the oldies, who are automatically better, I'm more refined blah blah. If so, I'm pretty screwed up, huh?

Anyway, Nick Cave's Murder Ballads..now that's something. I like such morbid concepts as having an album about, funnily enough, murder ballads (who would've guessed), although in moderation. It would have to be the best album by a new (post 1980s)artist I've heard - but hey, the competition pretty much comprises of a few Michael Jackson albums, so that doesn't exactly say a whole lot.

It's interesting that the stuff on here is probably more affecting and emotional than what you get on your average death metal record. It would be wrong to come into the album with the mindset that it's typical nihilistic stuff about killing people. Cave offers both sides of the act of murder, the victim and the murderer himself. The opener, Song Of Joy, pretty much lets you know what you're in for - grim tales of horrid acts, leaving you wondering what future is there for man. Well, not quite, but to a degree.

Songs like The Curse Of Millhaven are really something else, what with lines like "Sooner or later we all gotta die" - the logical conclusion to the narrator therefore being that you may as well die now than wait for death to come to you. Morbid, but at least it has atmosphere.

I wonder how this stacks up against Tom Wait's Bone Machine? The latter is of course more about death than murder, but obviously there is a certain degree of overlap in the two topics.