Breaking off from his performance in Glasgow on Sunday, Nick Cave reminisced about a previous visit to the former European City of Culture. “The first gig I ever played in Glasgow, several people pissed on me from the balcony,” he said.

Now aged 50, Cave gets more respect these days. Acclaimed for his work as a screenplay and soundtrack writer, honoured in exhibitions and academic conferences, and probably as big a pop star as he has ever been, he has made the journey from rank outsider to revered icon in emphatic style. But he has never got too comfortable and there was still something feral about this performance by him and his aptly named bunch of Bad Seeds.

“Get ready to shield yourself,” he sang as the band opened with the ominously clanking groove of Night of the Lotus Eaters. With his receding, jet-black mullet and Australian cricketer's moustache, Cave no longer looks like much of a rock god, but he threw himself into the part with physical zeal, his spindly figure moving between mic stand and keyboard like a toreador.

Much of the show was given over to songs from the new album, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, a robust collection of extreme contrasts. Cave strapped on a guitar for the title track, rapping out the lyric in a kind of beat-poet drawl, while the magnificently bearded Warren Ellis exchanged his miniature guitar for a violin, from which he produced a heavily distorted scraping noise. With two full drum kits and a percussion station manned by various Seeds, often at the same time, the sound was driven by heavy rhythmic undercurrents.

Today's Lesson was a superb rocker, while We Call Upon the Author was a magnificent rant, delivered with much shaking of the fist at the heavens. Jesus of the Moon was a contrastingly gentle, lilting tune framed by acoustic guitar, during which Ellis turned his hand to a delicate flute part.

Older songs were introduced sparingly, and there was no obvious build-up of greatest hits. A theatrical Red Right Hand found Cave bathed in a wash of crimson lighting, his voice rising in a dark saturnine growl. But there was warmth and tenderness too in a delicate version of Let Love In and encores of Lyre of Orpheus and Into My Arms. Dragged back once more, the band reverted to type for the garage-band thump of Wanted Man and the hyperviolent Tale of Stagger Lee, during which the body count reached computer-game proportions.

Tour continues at the Hammersmith Apollo, London W6, Wed, Thur & Fri

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