The reissues

The punk-rock institution that is Cosmic Psychos tends to take a back seat to their Australian brethren—Radio Birdman, The Birthday Party and The Saints—but ask any band that came out of Seattle in the early 1990s, and they’ll swear by these blokes from Melbourne. Part of Cosmic Psychos’ charm comes from the fact they began playing punk rock in high school out of sheer boredom, and not much has changed three decades later. The band’s full story—the countries toured, the bands influenced, the beers demolished—is captured in the new rock doc Cosmic Psychos: Blokes You Can Trust (which includes testimonials from the likes of Mudhoney, Buzz Osborne and Eddie Vedder), and with that comes a U.S. tour and a reissue of the Psychos’ first three albums—Cosmic Psychos, Down on the Farm, Go the Hack—on venerable garage label Goner Records. Needless to say, this shit sounds like a rusty bulldozer (the topic of some of their songs) plowing its way from the Paleolithic Age into late-’70s punk. “You drove me up the wall, I ain’t no spider,” shouts bassist Ross Knight with a heavy Aussie accent on Down On the Farm’s anthemic noise-bomb “Custom Credit.” As you can tell, Cosmic Psychos are about as subtle as a boulder to the head. They’ll definitely get yer rawks off.