Have you ever seen that TV ad for Triple M’s The Grill Team? Where they list a bunch of things men like? (Beer, footy, pies, bikes, fixing things, etc) Well they left one thing off that list – The Cosmic Psychos. The Aussie rock veterans are more blokey than a bunch of yobbos sinking VB’s and have more balls than a hotel room full of footy players. Opening up with Nice Day To Go To The Pub, the tone is set early and carries through the whole record.
Battlewitch is a stab at old Nick Cave tunes with its dark poetry recital and dirge-like feel, but this is the only respite from the manliness of the rest of the record. Hoon, Nude Sheilas On Motorbikes Drinking Beer and Watchbox Rodd (Fucked In A Truck) pretty much sums up their themes right there in the title. Songs about drinking, fighting, rooting and driving is all you’ll get out of The Cosmic Psychos.
The second disc on this album is a bit of a Cosmic Psychos retrospective with selected tracks from their extensive back catalogue. And funnily enough, the same themes apply again. Drinking (Pub) and pulling chicks (Hooray Fuck and David Lee Roth). However, I am cut that Thank Mum For The Rabbits didn’t make it on here, but then again, it doesn’t involve beer, so fair enough.
The Cosmic Psychos haven’t changed much in sound over the twenty years of their existence. Having been cited as influences to Nirvana and the Melvins, the band invented that fuzz box sound that in the nineties we called grunge. It’s been a while since the Cosmic Psychos have put out new music, but Glorious Barsterds puts them back onto the sweaty stage in every dank pub in the country, just as it should be.
