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 Eternitycaptures Cave at the noisy intersection between the punk-rock entropy of the Birthday Party and his later incarnation as the gothic Elvis. Amazing, scary stuff. --Tod Nelson
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