Nick Cave's early-1980s band the Birthday Party teetered on the edge of chaos to the point where, at one gig, a punter was able to urinate down the bassist's leg without the fellow even flinching. Few would have laid bets on the band lasting a week, never mind their leader hitting peak form yet again almost 25 years later.

Cave has survived because he has crafted an oeuvre that transcends the vagaries of time and show business, much like that of Johnny Cash. People will experience his trademarks - love, death, loving death and deathly love - as long as they breathe and go to the toilet. Then again, there's a certain topical frisson in hearing the Man in Black and White yell "There's a war coming!" as US troops prepare to enter Falluja.

The first hour and a half of this show is devoted entirely to Cave's new album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, which once again ups the artist's body count. If he exhibited such gory fantasies in any other walk of life, he'd be in Guantánamo Bay. But if the line "Got the abattoir blues/ Right down to my shoes" (which are black, obviously) seems suspiciously close to self-parody, the presence of a four-piece gospel choir shows that Cave is not averse to new tricks, or even, at one point, an "Ooh la la".

He remains a live-wire performer - pacing, smoking, grumbling about the lighting. The breathless There She Goes, My Beautiful World elicits a hilariously inappropriate high kick. And yet, perhaps because the band have not quite lived with them for long enough, the new songs fall just short of the boiling point reached by Into Your Arms and a hell-raising Stagger Lee. Cave mischievously follows cries for more with Do You Love Me?, which suggests the old devil may understand showbiz more than he lets on.

· At Manchester Apollo tonight. Box office: 0161-832 1111. Then touring.