The Beasts aren't the Beasts of Bourbon. but they both share members and a sense of fierce perversity.

So when The Beasts play their show to mark 35 years since their immediate forebears, the Beasts of Bourbon, birthed the "Black Milk" album at The Forum in Melbourne on September 12, expect it to hit emotional heights and to venture into unchartered territory.

The sun is setting over Sydney and on the line is Tex Perkins, singer for both bands and, with Kim Salmon (guitar) and Boris Sujdovic (bass), a survivor of the original line-up of the Beasts of Bourbon.

_{The "Black Milk Beasts" of Bourbon: Tex Perkins, Kim Salmon, Boris Sudjovic, James Baker and Spencer P Jones. Tony Mott photo.} 

Perkins is on home turf in Far Northern New South Wales, perched in his car outside a supermarket. When not picking up a loaf of bread and a litre of (white) milk, he’s focused on re-learning the songs that make up “Black Milk”. 

He reveals that one of the things that will make The Beasts' Forum show special is that much of the celebrated album material will be making its live debut.

"We actually never played about half that record live. We always did a bunch of them live like 'Bad Revisited', 'Let's Get Funky' and 'Black Milk', but the other half were only done in the studio.

"The 'Black Milk' album was deliberately eclectic and was written on the first Beasts of Bourbon European tour in 1989.

"We'd just released the 'Sour Mash' album and were encountering all this media that was like: 'Oh they are the drunkest band in the world...that filthy bluesy, grungy band...all that sort of thing'.

"So we instinctively wanted to push back against that."

There are distinct phases of the stop-and-start Beasts of Bourbon history. It kicked off with "The Axeman's Jazz" in 1984, the mutant swamp-country album recorded in Sydney in a boozy six- hour haze.

After personnel shuffles that were inevitable for a part-time band drawn from others, "Sour Jazz", cemented the line-up and it was ready to take risks. Spencer P Jones and Kim Salmon made for one of the most exciting guitar partnerships of their time, and Perkins was growing into his role as a magnetic frontman. 

"Black Milk" pushed the rowboat out past the shallows. It sold modestly (142 in the charts) but showed a band that was more than a portable piss-up and a sum of its parts. It ultimately served as a launchpad for national profile.

“Black Milk” is now being celebrated by The Beasts, the rambunctious outfit Perkins of Beasts of Bourbon survivors that Tex describes as "the world's best Beasts of Bourbon cover band".

_{Tex in full flight with The Beasts. Charlie Owen in the background.}

Charlie Owen (guitar) tag teams with Kim Salmon to stoke genuine six-string fire and Sujdovic is back laying down thick bass-lines. Melbourne's Evan "Rock" Richards, drummer for Burn In Hell, Cold Harbour and Tex Perkins & The Fat Rubber Band among others, subs for the late James Baker, for whom he was drum tech and understudy on recent The Beasts tours. 

Offered the idea of a big production gig to mark the anniversary of "Black Milk", Tex played the album for the first time in decades and is looking back on its contrariness with some fondness. 

"You get Kim (Salmon) writing 'Cool Fire' - and actually the Kim songs were probably the most striking example of the Beasts the Bourbon becoming a little more complex, a little bit more intellectual, if you will.

"I mean 'Words From A Woman To Her Man' is quite a conceptually interesting sort of song. It's there in the title: It's a woman complaining to her man and (it's) delivered by males. But yeah, when I sing that, it's the words of a woman to her man.

"Then there were the Spencer P Jones songs which were influenced by being in Europe. There's 'Bad Revisited' and I remember that being written and played on that tour, long before we recorded it.

"And other things like 'A Fate Much Worse Than Life', which is a polka. That was really a departure, to say the least.

"There's three different writers on the record and they're all writing deliberately conflicting kind of things. But that's what the album is about. There's no consistency in it. It's a deliberate shuffling of the cards."

By the time the band with reconfigured engine room of (Surrealists) Tony Pola and Brian Hooper released "The Low Road" in 1991, swathes of Australia were sitting up and taking notice.

So "Black Milk" is an important part of the Beasts of Bourbon story. One thing's been bugging me for 35 years: Exactly what does its title mean?

"That's a good question. Spencer came up with the term and we just thought that's a great name for an album.  And then we wrote the song.

"The vocal chanting - I brought that idea into the song. I guess it's sort of invoking sort of some kind of voodoo ritual."

Like the Stooges on "We Will Fall"?, I venture.

"Well, thank you! I love 'We have Will Fall'.  

"I made up that (‘Black Milk’) riff and I was listening to a lot of jazz at the time."

Tex Perkins has been Oz Rock's Mr Everywhere for more time than most people can remember. From his original Brisbane back alley boys Tex Deadly and The Dums Dums, to the Black Eye bands like Salamander Jim and Thug, from the funky and chic stylings of the recently revived The Cruel Sea to the engaging Tex Don and Charlie and his own many self-fronted bands, Tex has been a font of personal musical re-invention.

Do you bore easily? Is it OCD? Is it hard to keep up with all the ch-ch-ch-changes?

"Oh, I'm just interested in a lot of things and I feel fortunate to be in the company of creative people I want to collaborate with.

"I've always had that policy of wanting to work with as many different people and learn as much as I can. And it's been an absolute joy to do it that way rather than being one of those successful bands that has to play their back catalogue over and over again."

So fast forwarding to The Forum on September 12, what can punters expect?

"We're probably gonna do side one of 'Black Milk’ and then we're going to play songs from the back catalogue that further illustrate or are compatible with those songs.

"And then we'll make our way through side two and then the encore will be, I would say, career  highlights."

But that's not all. Cash Savage and The Last Drinks, The Johnnys (and I'm declaring an interest there as their manager) and keys wiz Ezra Lee make for a killer undercard.

_{Tex with the late James Baker.} 

Tex continues: "We've got a few guest players joining The Beasts. We've got Dave Graney who's going to sing 'Blue Stranger'.

"Cash Savage is supporting, but she's also getting up as a guest vocalist.  She's gonna sing 'I'm So Happy I Could Cry' with Dan Brody playing piano accordion.

"It's going to be great to have the Johnnys there. They've been long-time friends and there wouldn't have been a Beasts of Bourbon without the Johnnys."

As well as an ode to a landmark record and a farewell to fallen friends, the show is likely to put a lid on Beasts of Bourbon, save for a pending re-issue of "The Low Road" next year to mark its own birthday.

"I enjoy working with Kim and Boris and Charlie in The Beasts and there may be further activity in that context, but I feel like closing the Beasts of Bourbon chapter."

The Beasts play "Black Milk" with special guests Cash Savage and The Last Drinks, The Johnnys and Ezra Lee at The Forum in Melbourne on September 12. Tickets here.