Since the beginning of the pandemic, Nick Cave has kept himself busy, interacting with fans through his Red Hand Files newsletter and making Idiot Prayer, a solo-piano concert film that also became a live album. Cave and his band the Bad Seeds had plans to tour the UK and Europe in 2020, and after rescheduling that tour for 2021, they ultimately cancelled the tour. In a Red Hand Files post last month, Cave wrote that the cancellation “is a great disappointment to me, and to the rest of the band.” He also signed off with this: “Time to make a record.” Now, it looks like he’s made it.

In today’s edition of The Red Hand Files, Cave again writes about how much he misses playing live. Almost offhandedly, he ends the newsletter by mentioning that he’s been recording with Bad Seeds member and longtime collaborator Warren Ellis and that they’ve completed work on a record:

Anyway, as promised in my last issue, I did go into the studio — with Warren — to make a record.

It’s called CARNAGE.

Cave has offered no further details on this new piece of music. We don’t know when it will come out or what form it will take. We also don’t know whether it’ll be an actual album. Cave’s last album was Ghosteen, the shatteringly powerful double album that he and the Bad Seeds released in 2019. It’ll be fascinating to see how he follows that.