Hastings is a scary enough place at the best of times.

But on a cold and stormy November night what more could a brother want than an evening of death pop cabaret on the wrong end of Hastings pier hosted by the duke of spook himself, the man with the milk white tan, Mr Nick Cave.

His ghoulish reputation has been slightly tarnished of late by rumours he spends his weekends choosing tiling schemes in Churchill Square. But the bombastic fire 'n' brimstone preaching of this show proved Cave has not yet resigned himself to an early retirement.

Backed by the spit-slinging, fag smoking dark rock machine that is The Bad Seeds, Cave treated a whooping audience to a set mostly derived from his hot new double album Abbatoir Blues and The Lyre Of Orpheus.

Obviously a man at the height of his song-writing powers, Cave's new material is self-assured and epic in scale, and here he mostly drew from the faster, rockier numbers on Abbatoir Blues.

The stomping dark pop gospel of singles There She Goes, My Beautiful World and Nature Boy saw Cave charging round the stage as in the good old days of The Birthday Party.

Older numbers like The Weeping Song were given a new dimension by the addition of four Pentacostal- style backing singers.

Cave treated them like a new toy, goading them to ever more epic heights until it seemed that the whole band may literally take off, with half of Hastings in tow.

Also of note was the ever wonderful Bad Seed Mr Warren Ellis, whose scraping, seething fiddle parts never failed to draw some attention away from the main man.

The rest of the band were as tight as ever, responding to Cave's leaping and hollering with some rock star shape-throwing of their own.

With an audience consisting mainly of older, gothic fans - the shell suit crowd were hiding under the covers tonight - I was expecting a more sombre affair.

The crowd, however, made enough noise to awaken even the most sleepy of Brighton early risers, and it was hard not to become embroiled in a pool of swirling middle-aged jivers and hand clappers.

During a lull in the set, a voice from the crowd squeaked: "Thank you for coming to Hastings, Nick."

"It's my absolute pleasure," Cave growled in response. Now Brighton's is not the only pier to have been set on fire.