MUDRAT: “We Have To Have Hope, And Endeavour To Be Better”
Two years ago, a Google of the term “MUDRAT” might have gotten you a well-meaning machine asking “Did you mean: Mallrat?”
In 2025, however, it's one of the hottest names in Australian music – representing an unwavering, belligerent and potently political presence on both the stage and the airwaves.
Riding on this newfound momentum, the rap-rock project released Social Cohesion – the long-awaited debut album – on Friday. It is, by MUDRAT's own admission, a rush job. However, it's far from a hatchet job.
“We've done this wrong in every single way,” says Sean Thompson – the project's frontman and de-facto figurehead – laughing at what's transpired over the last few months of his life.
“All the singles were basically out as soon as they'd been mastered, which then left us in a position where we had to get half the album done in the timeframe where we'd normally finish one song. We even wrote an entirely new song and recorded it in that time period, too. I'm sure I'm going to look back on it and be like, 'Holy crap, I can't believe we did that. We shouldn't have been able to do it, but we pulled it off.”
Finishing the album just under a month before it's meant to come out is a bold, risky move – but, then again, Thompson has defined MUDRAT thus far exclusively by making them.
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“It was a month of maybe three hours sleep a night every single night, then going to work and hitting it up again,” he says of the final sprint.
“I don't actually know how to think about it properly right now; it probably won't hit me until on the day.”
When you see Thompson on stage with MUDRAT, you'll duly note that he's not alone. Across the last few years, Thompson has been building up the project's sonic palette with an extensive team of musical collaborators.
Together, they're known as MUDRAT & The Mischief – and Thompson is adamant that Social Cohesion wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't for them. “I don't hide from the fact that this is a new world for me in terms of leading a band,” he says.
“One of the big things we spoke about was never really wanting to settle on a sound. Each of the band members have come in with different reference points. Javier [Langham], our guitarist, is the historian of the band; he's teaching me about all kinds of different music.
“Emile [Battour, drummer] was a member of Ocean Grove, and he's very much from that pop-punky background. Noah [Dixon-Sole, bassist]'s got his own thing going on completely separate to the rest of us. The rapper in me is so invigorated by this project in this weird way, because you're always conditioned to find new ways to exist in the music you're presented with.
“That's been the challenge, and my vocals gluing with what they've come up with makes it MUDRAT.”
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Thompson has plenty to say about the current state of affairs on Social Cohesion. Spoiler alert: He's not too happy.
What may come as a surprise to some that only know MUDRAT's political material, however, is how unflinchingly introspective the album gets. One minute you're raging against the machine, the next you're lying down on the therapist's couch detailing why you feel the need to rage.
In Thompson's mind, of course, it's all connected: “The narratives that are there about my individual experiences are purposefully put there to synthesize the relationship between the individual and the collective,” he says.
“I learned the ability to be vulnerable in my music before I started MUDRAT, to the point where I could write these very personal things and just be OK with putting it out.The shift with this project is that I started to recognize the ability to write about your darkest memories or experiences, and make them collectively applied. Even when you're talking about the most specific of your own experiences, people find a way to relate.”
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Social Cohesion is packed with the charging, snarky anarcho-punk with which MUDRAT has made its name – see the stomping You Don't Care About Poor People or the fist-wielding nu-metal of MUD25, a sequel of sorts to the breakthrough 2023 single Mud. There are, however, two major curveballs.
The first is FaceToFace, a slinking slow-burner that details Thompson's fractured final moments with his father. “We play that at a point in the set where I've been riling up the crowd for the first half, and it's put in there to encourage trust with the audience,” he explains.
“I'm really trying to drive home a message, but I'm also here to change your mind about the way that you think about the world. There's this calculation of healthy deconstruction, which comes from my time being a social worker.”
The second is A Beautiful Mess, the album's six-and-a-half-minute closer that builds shimmering, post rock style guitars into a complete musical avalanche – all while Thompson goes from a poetic whisper to a throat-tearing scream.
“That song is very much me turning the camera around and pointing it at everybody else, because that's the least that I can do as someone in the spotlight,” he says.
“Art is so important, but it's not going to save the world. It's always going to be about the community and the people. I wanted to use that last opportunity on the album to speak about them, and my admiration for them. It's a shit show out there, but we have to have hope – and endeavour to be better.
“That's the arc of it all,” he adds. “I didn't want to be too showy about it. I just wanted to put it out there, and allow people to maybe connect with it through a sense of feeling – as opposed to being told how to feel.”
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Reflecting on his half-hour of power, concocted with his closest mates and collaborators in a baptism by fire, Thompson knows that MUDRAT's debut album is the most of-the-moment thing he could have possibly made.
He wants Social Cohesion to be part of the bigger picture, and serve as a document of the last two years – both in his life and the world at large. “We are, I feel, at a critical point in history,” he says. “Capitalism is getting towards its end, and then things are going to start cracking.
“This is what we wanted to capture; to make sure that that is an entry point for somebody listening in the future. They'll hear what I'm talking about and maybe pick up a book, or Google something about whatever was happening at the time.
“I want this album to bring people together, but I can't just mush people together and be like, 'You're a community now,’” he adds. “That's authoritarian. With any luck, though, I think I can just be the first step. You're not alone in this. We're going to do this together.”
MUDRAT’s Social Cohesion is out now.
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