Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
The Firstborn Is Dead

THE REVIEW

The second work by Nick Cave brings back the author in all his malicious and apocalyptic charge. Compared to the previous work, "From Her To Eternity," "The Firstborn Is Dead" presents a more linear musical form without losing elements of cursing, morbidity, and ancestral and primitive ritualism.

Probably the work where the influence of blues is most marked, a genre reinterpreted in an alternative and modern lens and, in this aspect, Cave is certainly one of the foremost interpreters along with Gun Club, Tom Waits, and Morphine.

The album opens with "Tupelo", introduced and concluded by the sound of pouring rain that explicitly represents the climate and mood, fatalistic and hallucinatory, of the entire work. The aforementioned track contains rhythmic musical traits, pervaded by a demonic rhythm with the presence of dark and sinister choirs.

"Train Long - Suffering" constitutes a demonic and perverse railway-paced blues ride, just like "Black Crow King", characterized by a singing-recitational style in the name of the blackest and most cursed ritualism.

"Knockin' on Joe" is a piercing blues, capable of penetrating the darkest depths and recesses of the soul. Initially marked by the sparse and essential sound of a harmonica, the track then proceeds inexorably slowly, like a nightmare-filled journey, full of desolation, despair, and sweet sadness.

"Wanted Man", Bob Dylan's cover, is characterized in this version by its vehemence and its mad and evil charge where Cave's frenzied preacher qualities stand out.

"Blind Lemon Jefferson", a clear homage to the great bluesman, becomes another sinister blues, loaded with apocalyptic tension and a sense of inevitable curse.

"The Six Strings that Drew Blood"  features a sparse and essential musical form, slow in its advance, always evil and sinister.

"Say Goodbye To The Little Girl Tree" unfolds at its beginning with a direct, mysterious, and hypnotic call to the devil's music, then conveys, as the track progresses, the most gloomy and wild emotions.

Besides the dark, mad, and apocalyptic singing, the work possesses, from a purely musical standpoint, all the elements that distinguish Cave's early artistic experiences that, in a nutshell, consist of an obsessive blues guitar sound, sparse and essential, a harmonica not intrusive yet capable, when present, of satisfactorily completing the entire soundscape, and an absolutely gothic and cavernous bass sound.

It is also worth noting the continuous presence of choral elements that, in terms of emotional intensity in its type, reflect and contribute to consolidating the underlying mood of the work.

Overall, the album possesses a musical dimension that draws heavily from delta blues, which is evident in the musical traits and the blend of all the instruments giving rise to an unconventional form of modern blues.

From a purely conceptual perspective, it is possible to argue that, even in this case, the core of the work is pervaded derivatively by various existential elements, legends, and myths that surround and belong to the context linked to the blues and the deep rural south; themes, dimensions, however, placed in a decidedly current lens of introspection and individual existentialism.