Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Hammersmith Apollo, London

If this is the age of the cult personality then Nick Cave has enough of the stuff to start a thousand cults. A performer at the height of his powers urging his flock to ‘Look At Me Now’ at the manic peak of ‘Jubilee Street’. The lighting creates two enormous skeletal Cave shadow puppets either side of the venue, mimicking every gliding vampire like move. Switching between monitor hip thrusts and the intense delicate piano solos, there’s a bizarre juxtaposition of the forceful yelps and hypnagogic jerks of The Birthday Party projected over mature grown up ballads.

This isn’t the gang racket of Grinderman, this is theatre, religious poetry, spoken word. ‘The Mercy Seat’ begins unrecognisably slow, swirling and swelling into endlessly deep repetitious demonic demonic chorus-less chants, building to oblivion. With The Bad Seeds on such amazing form tonight it’s easy to understand why they are about to release their fourth live album. You suspect however that if you are trying to bottle their performance you really need to not only SEE it but also TURN IT UP LOUD to uncomfortable levels: this is not music for headphones, you need to feel it in your gut.

13 songs in, just as it could start to get comfortable, ‘Stagger Lee’ jumps up the volume to gun shot level - clanging metal and smashing glass echoing round the venue at ear splitting volume. Intensity doesn’t slip for a second - if this is all an act then it’s a performance so immersive that you are left with no option but to be swept along with it and wait for the curtain call. When that call does come it’s in the shape of new song ‘Give us a Kiss’, slow, awkward, provocatively obscure, you can’t help but feel that it’s the restless fury that is Cave working through some kind of improvised situationist period that is deployed to send us off into the night firmly on our toes.