As guest-studded and widescreen as it is unremittingly violent and bleak, Murder Ballads either wholly perplexingly or completely understandably brought Cave and his Bad Seeds to widespread critical and commercial acclaim. The ranks of the Bad Seeds were augmented yet again with the addition of Jim Sclavunos, but otherwise the group remains as on the preceding two albums. Although the albums are not explicitly connected (apart from the reference to a “red right hand” in “Song Of Joy”), it’s still tempting to view Henry’s Dream, Let Love In, and Murder Ballads as a loose trilogy of sorts. Despite its streak of savage humor, Murder Ballads is easily the grimmest of the three, even as the band continues to embrace a broad palette of styles and instrumental textures. But unlike the role that “New Morning” plays on Tender Prey and “Lay Me Low” on Let Love In, the cover of Dylan’s “Death Is Not The End” that closes Murder Ballads seems almost cruelly perverse in light of the cavalcade of murderous rogues that have just finished wandering the album’s pages.

Overcoming the violence of the subject matter proves relatively easy, however, given the effortless dexterity of the Bad Seeds again on display. The album opener “Song Of Joy” is easily the most disturbing song of the bunch, in no small part because of the way the band moves in great swelling sheets of sound, leaving the verse space a terrifyingly blank landscape for Cave’s gripping storytelling. The key line early in the song is “All things move toward their end,” which proves just as fine a slogan as any for the entire album to follow. The Kylie Minogue duet “Where The Wild Roses Grow” was a smash hit single, and with good reason — Minogue’s quavering, sympathetic vocals are a perfect match for Cave in the pose of a plainspoken murderer. “Henry Lee,” while lovely enough, is almost more notable because it’s a duet between Cave and PJ Harvey, who were by all accounts in the midst of a torrid love affair during this album cycle. The dissolution of that affair would also prove the grist for Cave’s subsequent album The Boatman’s Call.

Not every track hits the mark, though. “The Kindness Of Strangers” feels, musically, like it could have come from the sessions for The Good Son, but here, given the plaintive lope of the piece and the weeping sounds from former Bad Seed (and former intimate of Cave) Anita Lane, it comes across as rather mawkish. “Crow Jane” hits a peculiarly jazzy note, and to be honest, ever since I noticed how much Martyn Casey’s bass line in the song sounds like the jazz standard “The Best Is Yet To Come,” it’s been so painfully distracting that it ruins any other effect the song might have.

But the album’s triumphs, which are many, are such runaway successes as to lessen the impact of any less essential songs. The Bad Seeds’ take on the traditional “Stagger Lee” is so overstuffed with swagger and boozy aggression that one can’t help but thrill at being taken in, even as Cave spits such superficially absurd lyrics as “I’ll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get to one fat boy’s asshole.” The song’s obscene conclusion — soundtracked by Cave firing actual gun shots — is one of those things that makes one feel legitimately awful for enjoying so much. The same goes doubly so for the riotously fun “The Curse Of Millhaven,” which is a rollicking jam session that chronicles a series of unspeakable crimes committed by a fifteen-year-old girl, and the impossible-not-to-sing-along-with chorus: “All of God’s children, they all got to die.” “Millhaven” is also of note because it features the Dirty Three’s (and future full-time Bad Seed) Warren Ellis putting in a crucial turn on lead violin (as well as accordion). And “O’Malley’s Bar” is just as hilarious as it is morbid, with Cave’s patient recitation of his narrator’s multiple murders inside the titular bar matched turn for turn by Conway Savage’s pitch-perfect organ vamping.

Truth be told, the litany of horrors that Murder Ballads delights in can get to be somewhat overwhelming, which means that, despite containing some of the Bad Seeds’ finest musical moments, it’s one of the ones I revisit least often. Each new return after an extended absence, though, still gives a great flying kick to the gut, so it can’t be so easily written off.