90%
If there’s one constant in Australian music circles, it’s the Cosmic Psychos.
No matter what else happens, which trend comes and goes, the Psychos are as the Psychos were as the Psychos will always be. As to be expected, on the ninth full album from the lads there is absolutely zero mucking around.
Mountain of Piss is another power-charged rock and roll celebration of yob culture, larrikin humour and twisted but astute social observation. Sin Bin decries the moronic self-entitlement of misbehaviour in professional sport, Too Old to Drink in Pubs the gentrification of the band’s favourite pastime, Dunny Seat is about, well, leaving the seat up and Beep descends into a minute and a half of heavily overlaid profanities and guitar noise, all delivered with the subtlety of copping a half-full pint glass in the face.
Bare bones brute force, unrestrained and loud: the raucous simplicity of the Psychos’ brand of punk rock never wavers, even as they take slight artistic variations like the faintly melodic Canberra travelogue Dickson. Only at the end do the Cosmic Psychos back off, and when they do it’s into the sludgey drone of Dumb as they take a parting shot at social media zombies.
Loud, raunchy, bogan and dumb, the Cosmic Psychos have delivered yet again. Hail the Mountain of Piss!
