Australian singer-songwriter Nicholas Edward Cave AO is also a poet, lyricist, author, screenplay, composer, and infrequent actor. Born and raised in rural Victoria, Nick Cave studied art in Melbourne before fronting the Birthday Party, one of the city's top post-punk bands, in the late 1970s. He is best known for his baritone voice and for leading the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Cave's music is generally characterized by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences, and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love, and violence. In 1980, they moved to London. Disillusioned by life there, they developed a darker and more difficult sound that contributed to the development of gothic rock and earned the title of "the most violent live band in the world."
Nick Cave