“See you all in another 10 years when we’ll be even older and uglier.”

Since 2006, Nick Cave has divided his focus between the Bad Seeds, the band he’s fronted since 1983, and a somehow seedier subgroup of the gambit, Grinderman. Just as it seemed that the Bad Seeds may be winding down with the departure of longtime member Mick Harvey, in the place of the leaner Grinderman, Cave unexpectedly announced at the Meredith Music Festival in Australia this weekend, “that’s it for Grinderman. It’s over,” according to the Vine.

No other news is yet available for the sudden announcement, but it’s a very strange turn of events to say the least. It could be that the Bad Seeds have regained Cave’s main focus and that he’s tired of leaving Conway Savage and Thomas Wydler out of the fun, or it could be a complete breaking down of the whole franchise. It will hopefully not be the latter being that Cave and his crew have been really stepping up their game in the past few years, with “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” being one of their best albums to date.

Grinderman is yet another casualty of 2011′s rampage of awesome bands disbanding, with both The White Stripes and R.E.M. calling it quits, not to mention Sonic Youth being on the shakiest of ground after the announcement of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s split.

To get an idea of the noisy fury that we will now be deprived of seeing again, here’s the band performing “Worm Tamer” at the RAK Sessions.