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10.0
123778
10.0 |
Evening Standard
Provides solace amid communal catastrophe
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10.0
123785
10.0 |
NME
Cave and his Bad Seeds bandmate take an adventurous leap into the COVID era’s dark night of the soul with this surprise new record
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10.0
123795
10.0 |
The Independent
Blunt, hopeful and full of flesh and spirit
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10.0
123811
10.0 |
The Observer
The grief remains, but Cave’s hunger for retribution is back too, heightened at every turn by Ellis’s strings, on this wild, writerly masterpiece
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10.0
124149
10.0 |
Mojo
More than clashing sonics or soaring hymns or pervasive anxiety (and the quest to overcome it), the quality that best defines Carnage might be Cave's reckoning with the unknown, or his recognition of the unknowable
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9.1
123850
9.1 |
Consequence Of Sound
The longtime Bad Seeds seek out the light at the end of the tunnel on their new record
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9.0
123858
9.0 |
Loud And Quiet
As lockdown stretches out eternal, the timing is perfect; once more through our lives, Nick Cave is one step ahead with the perfect music for now
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9.0
123862
9.0 |
Paste Magazine
The longtime collaborators and Bad Seeds bandmates stretch themselves yet again, suggesting there may be no end to the inspiration they have up their sleeves
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9.0
123784
9.0 |
DIY
A jewel in the Cave-Ellis cannon
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9.0
123793
9.0 |
Clash
Everything feels poised, curated, and contoured, an album that expresses itself over eight tracks and no more; it’s succinct without leaning into brevity, a beautifully intense song cycle that thrives on the closeness of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
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9.0
123776
9.0 |
Vinyl Chapters
Carnage is racked with episodes of sustained beauty and stricken with a fragile sense of mortality, contentment and attachment, swirling around Ellis’s spidery soundscapes
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8.4
123902
8.4 |
Sputnik Music (staff)
You can chalk Carnage up as anything from a zeitgeist experiment to a flawed masterpiece, but there’s something precious and compassionate at its heart that I honestly believe will make the world a better place in its own peculiar way, beyond the scope of critical evaluation
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8.4
123971
8.4 |
Spectrum Culture
Even when we can't escape tragedy, Cave sees us through
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8.1
123860
8.1 |
Beats Per Minute
One of Cave’s most maddeningly beautiful records
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8.0
123911
8.0 |
musicOMH
With Carnage, Cave and Ellis have successfully balanced introspection and self reflection with the tumult and confusion of the wider world. It’s a hugely powerful statemen
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8.0
123831
8.0 |
Northern Transmissions
Ellis and Cave prove their creative relationship is stronger than ever and use the last four songs to depict the hardships of the pandemic through beauty and refinement
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8.0
123848
8.0 |
Pitchfork
Nick Cave’s cinematic work with his bandmate Warren Ellis is a slight departure from last decade’s trilogy of albums. It’s defined by its stark contrasts, at turns brutal, surreal, and romantic
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8.0
123796
8.0 |
The Quietus
Full of vast swings of emotion, strange shifts in reality, endless twists, and frustrating failures of momentum – an accurate reflection of the last year
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8.0
123777
8.0 |
The Guardian
Cave’s rich writing and Ellis’s dense sounds form a reliably potent picture of locked-down end-times and the fantasy of redemption
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8.0
123781
8.0 |
Gigwise
To release a surprise album, you must have something pretty spectacular – we expect nothing less from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. As usual, these powerhouse musicians have pulled it off and created magic
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8.0
123786
8.0 |
Exclaim
Carnage covers broader range than most of the Bad Seeds' recent records, cramming plenty of Cave's various stylings into a neat, eight-song package
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8.0
123789
8.0 |
Rolling Stone
On their surprise album, two Bad Seeds confront loneliness, cabin fever, and white supremacy — while still showing a glint of optimism
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8.0
127899
8.0 |
All Music
It's the work of two collaborative artists who are in the midst of a later-period renaissance that has spawned powerful, evocative music that speaks to its time without being confined to the crises that sparked its creation
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8.0
124206
8.0 |
Record Collector
It’s a majestic pairing. Ellis’ contributions prove every bit as lyrical and compelling as Cave’s, much of the music here holding a hypnotic quality, capturing the circular days of a plague year, but enlivened by unexpected flickers of sound, detours, charges
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7.5
124253
7.5 |
Gig Soup
Carnage sees Nick Cave at his angriest and energized in years and backed with the supremely talented Warren Ellis makes for an album positively designed for a world exhausted by Coronavirus and protests
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