A year ago, Nick Cave lost his son.

On Friday, the Australian singer-songwriter is set to release “Skeleton Tree ” with his band, The Bad Seeds. The album, which serves as an epitaph, is set to be preceded the night before its released by a one-time worldwide screening of “One More Time with Feeling,” a hybrid documentary and visual album retracing the painful creative journey of “Skeleton Tree.”

“It’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Jason Tostevin, vice president of communications and marketing at Gateway Film Center. “People will talk about being there, brought together in a few theaters across the country, seeing the first footage from this album.”

The Gateway Film Center was chosen to be one the venues where fans will get to hear the new tracks. It had already been chosen among 50 theaters in the nation to host the screening of Radiohead’s “Daydreaming” video, and with “One More Time with Feeling,” the cinema cements its status as a diverse independent art house, Tostevin said.

Beyond the cathartic aspect of Cave’s project, the format of the release worth noting.

“Visual albums are definitely becoming more of a thing,” said Sarah Drees, a fourth-year in arts management and president of the Music & Entertainment Industry Student Association, “It’s always cool when there is something to fulfill more of your senses than just the audio.”

Drees cited Frank Ocean with “Endless” and Beyonce with “Lemonade” as examples of prevalent visual albums. She said she sees these artists as those who care about giving to their music a cinematographic visual add-on, so as to preserve some kind of exclusive content and control over their disclosure.

Cave is no exception. He recruited director Andrew Dominik and pushed the exclusivity by making its distribution a limited-time projection across the world.

Judging by local response, the procedure might have some results.

Employees at Magnolia Thunderpussy record store at 1155 N. High St. said that its line has been saturated the last couple of days by Cave’s fans concerned about if “Skeleton Tree” will be available in the shop on Friday. The store is set to carry the album.

Tostevin shares the fans’ excitement and said he is “stoked” for Thursday night.

“One More Time With Feeling” is set to be screened on Thursday at 9 p.m. at the Gateway Film Center.

Editor’s note: This article was updated on Sept. 8 to clarify the length of the run of the documentary.