Album/EP

Cosmic Psychos - Mountain of Piss (Album Review)

Walladmin

Heavy Metal Wordsmith

/10

Jul 6, 2021

7 min read

Cosmic Psychos - Mountain of Piss
Released: July 9, 2021

Line up:

Ross Knight // vocals, bass
John “Mad Macka” McKeering // vocals, guitar
Dean Muller // vocals, drums

Online:

Official Website
Facebook
Instagram

One thing that I don’t like in this world is when your favourite band become a bunch of old, fat blokes, completely out of touch, and trying to relive past glories but are nowhere near up to the task.

Then you have the Cosmic Psychos.

Starting in Melbourne in the early 80s, the Cosmic Psychos are still going as strong as ever, and thanks to the excellent 2013 documentary, Blokes You Can Trust, there appears to be a bit of a CosPsy-naissance (see what I did there?). They have released two albums since then: Cum The Raw Prawn in 2016 and Loudmouth Soup in 2019, as well as numerous and successful tours both local and overseas.

Having been embraced by the punk community of Australia and overseas, the Psychos are now reaching a new breed of fans.

The Cosmic Psychos, like the Ramones, Motorhead and AC/DC have a formula, and it has worked for them for the last 40 years: songs about drinking, girls and farming played at a ferocious pace. Mountain of Piss does not stray from this formula at all. However, there is very little polish to this album. It was recorded in Knighty’s shed and it sounds like it.

These are simple songs, but as Matt Lukin from Mudhoney observed in the doco, they are also really funny. 'Beep' is just the guys swearing so much that an edited version of the song would be one long beep. 'Dickson' is a reworked version of Johnny Cash’s 'Jackson' but singing about visiting every suburb in Canberra (strewth). 'Dunny Seat' is a warning to any future partners of the band that “I leave the dunny seat up” and 'Munted' is pretty much all about getting munted.

The highlights on Mountain of Piss are the title track which is about conquering a mountain of piss for Australia and 'Sin Bin' is about dickhead footy players with references to ‘bubbling’. Yet it’s the change of pace of the countrified 'Too Old to Drink in Pubs' that is the real gem. Ross Knight laments not being able to just walk into a pub anymore and drink with a bunch of mates without being surrounded by hipsters and their craft beer — “The bartender looks like a rock’n’roll singer / Can’t pour a beer, but he’ll sell me a pinger”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUj5avQPoGM

In their 40 year career, the Cosmic Psychos have recorded some absolute anthems: 'Hooray Fuck', 'David Lee Roth', 'Down on the Farm', 'Go the Hack', 'Nice Day to Go to the Pub' and 'Fuckwit City' amongst many more. And Mountain of Piss contains plenty that will become regular singalongs at future Psychos gigs. It’s not as good as Blokes You Can Trust or Glorious Barsteds or even Cum The Raw Prawn, but it doesn’t have to be.

It’s a Cosmic Psychos album.

It does what it says on the box.