The first thing that hits you about Grinderman 2 is that you ve never heard anything like it. The debut album did its job. It defined the band. It marked a clear contrast with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Nick, Warren, Martyn & Jim forged a distinctly different way of working together. They cast off musical baggage, shrugged off accepted wisdom, and tested pre conceptions about who they were as musicians. In the process, they took to the Bad Seeds hallowed legacy with a baseball bat. Their new album, Grinderman 2 combines the structured invention of their live performance and the unrestrained free for all of their studio improvisation. But these guys also know something about the art of writing songs. Grinderman 2 bears the hallmark of its rapturously received predecessor, yet is more open ended in its structure, more far reaching in its scope, and gloriously lost in its own transports of noise and rhythm.