Nick Cave has confirmed that the spare time acquired as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in his 18th studio album, titled CARNAGE.

After cancelling his rescheduled 2021 UK and European tour due to the spread of the virus, Cave told fans that he felt it was now “opportunity to take stock” and that it was “time to make a new record".

Writing on his website The Red Hand Files, Cave replied to a fan about whether he has been in the studio with collaborator and Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis to make the follow-up to 2019’s critically-acclaimed Ghosteen.

Cave described his experience of missing life on the road and working with his bandmates, before confirming work on the latest album.

“In many ways lockdown has felt weirdly familiar, like I’ve experienced it before,” wrote Cave.

“I guess this should come as no surprise as I was a heroin addict for many years and self-isolating and social distancing were the name of the game. I am also well acquainted with the mechanics of grief — collective grief works in an eerily similar way to personal grief, with its dark confusion, deep uncertainty and loss of control.

“For me, lockdown feels like a state mandated version of more of the same — a formalisation of the kind of hermit-like behaviour to which I’ve always been predisposed, and so, as difficult as it has been to see the devastation and anguish caused by the pandemic — including to the lives of those close to me, and many who have written into The Red Hand Files — I have been doing okay.”

Cave continued: “I am surprised, though, at just how hard not being able to play live has felt. I have come to the conclusion that I am essentially a thing that tours. There is a terrible yearning and a feeling of a life being half-lived. I miss the thrill of stepping onto the stage, the rush of the performance, where all other concerns dissolve into a pure animal interrelation with my audience.

“I miss the complete surrender to the moment, the loss of self, the physicalness of it all, the feeding frenzy of communal love, the religion, the glorious exchange of bodily fluids — and The Bad Seeds themselves, of course, in all their reckless splendour, how I miss them. As much as sitting behind my desk can bring me a lot of joy, and the imagination can be a stimulating, even dangerous place, I long for the wanton abandon of the live performance.”

A solo Cave recently performed a streamed IDIOT PRAYER show, live at Alexandra Palace in London.

"Say what you like about Nick Cave, but there is no denying that he’s made some truly great records, and this – a live set of career highlights, scored for the end of the world, a world that ends not with a bang but a whisper - is right up there with the best of them," Pat Carty of Hot Press wrote of Cave's live album, IDIOT PRAYER.