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The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party

Since 1976 · Australia

The Birthday Party began in Melbourne in 1976 as the Boys Next Door, relocating first to London and then to Berlin as they transformed into one of the most genuinely extreme bands to emerge from post-punk. Their story

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Who they shaped

In front, left to right: The Jesus Lizard, Dinosaur Jr., Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Big Black, Black Tambourine, Rites of Spring.

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Junkyard cover

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Junkyard (1982)

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A feral, blues-damaged racket built around Rowland S. Howard's serrated slide guitar and a young Nick Cave's unhinged howl, more chaotic and more violent than anything the goth scene it partly spawned would attempt. Recorded amid the band's own disintegration, it channels that collapse directly into the performances — nothing here sounds rehearsed or safe. 'Release the Bats' turned camp horror-movie imagery into a genuine art-punk anthem, its title becoming shorthand for an entire aesthetic. The band split within a year of its release, leaving Junkyard as their most extreme and complete statement.

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The Birthday Party

Junkyard · 1982

The Birthday Party began in Melbourne in 1976 as the Boys Next Door, relocating first to London and then to Berlin as they transformed into one of the most genuinely extreme bands to emerge from post-punk. Fronted by a young Nick Cave and built around Rowland S. Howard's serrated, dissonant slide guitar, Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew, and Phill Calvert, the group made a sound — feral, blues-damaged, closer to horror-movie theater than to rock convention — that the goth scene it partly inspired rarely matched for sheer violence.

Prayers on Fire (1981) and Junkyard (1982) are the band's key statements, the latter recorded amid escalating drug use and internal conflict that would splinter the group within a year of its release. Cave and Harvey went on to form the Bad Seeds; Howard pursued a string of other projects, including Crime and the City Solution and These Immortal Souls, before his death in 2009. The Birthday Party's brief, chaotic run left a disproportionate mark on goth, noise rock, and the more extreme edges of alternative music that followed.

Since 1976 · Australia