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They are a band that have built such an obsessive cult fan-base...that you sometimes forget that they also had a 18-year break until famously returning in 2022. Lyrics are screamed out, moshing was prevalent near the front and there was a feeling that you couldn’t look away for a second. In all fairness, the best view was probably from the stands to really get an overall feel for what was going on. But, then you wouldn’t get the bruises!
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The crowd could barely bottle their anticipation for TISM, leading to the night sky filling with their loving chant: "TISM are wankers!" In the art world, TISM are amongst the one per cent who are astounding.
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“TISM are wankers,” the crowd chants, before we hear the whirring of leaf blowers, and TISM take to the stage in matching red outfits, balaclavas on, silver capes billowing upwards from the lawn tools taped to their backs. They open with a monologue about, well, pricks, and Kyle Sandilands should be fairly worried that he is mentioned in the same context as Bruce Lehrmann and Ben Roberts-Smith. The backdrop behind them falls, revealing a three-tiered scaffolding, and we see eighteen artists in white overalls working on giant paintings as TISM kick off a set that breaks free of the nostalgic vibe that has permeated the evening.
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TISM fans were out in droves around Melbourne’s CBD heading to the iconic Sidney Myer Music Bowl to see a band which, before this tour hadn’t headlined for two decades. TISM (THIS IS SERIOUS MUM) are well-known for their anonymity by wearing face masks, hence making the members unknown! They formed in 1982 and are an outrageously fun, 7-piece alternative rock band from Melbourne. This legendary Aussie band head-lined tonight’s show with their ‘DEATH TO ART’ Tour and presented an entertaining, theatrical show, full of hilarious stage antics. All fully dressed in ‘red’, consisting of red jumpsuit, cape, and masks with a rooster-mohawk headpieces on top. These Aussie larrikins jumped and danced about the stage in a chaotic manner, stage-dived into the audience, crowd-surfed and had the attendees in the palms of their hands. The crowd were in complete hysterics as they danced and sang along to their quirky anthems. The stage backdrop was a 3-tier scaffolding with multiple artists individually painting giant canvases, which were later thrown out into the crowd at the end of the show creating a frenzy amongst fans who tore them up and flung them about. The crowd booed TISM in between songs which was absolutely hilarious and which TISM embraced. Throughout the show one of the members held up placards announcing the upcoming song. They played a 23-song set and like MGF, the show was full of outrageous song lyrics and with so much going on it was hard to know what to focus on.
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Melbournian cult rockers TISM kicked off their ‘Death To Art’ Tour at Brisbane’s Riverstage on Sunday night, the venue packed with TISM fans old and new. But Sunday night’s mini-fest was more than just a TISM show (and what a show it was). It had that sweet-tasting essence of a ‘Homebake Festival’, lacing the buzz around the crowd. Their songs are drenched in satirical honesty, good and bad. PC they are not. Poetic, political, scathing, flamboyant and completely captivating, TISM’s stage presence is as grandiose as their music. They can get away with (almost) anything because they are TISM.
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the crowd ceremoniously BOO the band on stage ( a joke that the antsy security team doesn’t seem to be in on) TISM waste no time turning things into a shambles. Band members running around on stage, body slamming each other, singers barely surviving as they throw themselves into the crowd. It’s bonkers, it’s high energy and it’s fun. TISM are a bunch of absolute nutters and the crowd absolutely love it. This is what people came for, and TISM sure knows how to deliver. To be able to throw together a show like this and entertain a crowd for a solid five or so hours is no mean feat. We have been transported back in time, taken on a nostalgic journey and had a fucking good time doing so. It’s been a night of raucous good fun, and as the crowd returns to the street, smiles are wide as we all have witnessed something incredible.
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TISM’s return ‘a refreshingly fun celebration of vulgarity and Aussie humour’ On TISM’s first album in 20 years, its sprawling 80-minute, 29-song tracklist justifies its place in the oddball canon of this band of defamatory disco-punks, and holds up to repeat listens.
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Dressed in red hazmat type suits and matching red balaclavas (some with a sort of chicken/rooster comb arrangement on top) the seven members of TISM, who are all getting on in years to be honest, managed a performance with no letting up of the energy they would have displayed 20 or 30 years ago. There were body slams on the stage, and plenty of stage diving where fans ripped their masks off and a faithful roadie yanked them back out of the crowd to safety (repeatedly). There was crowd surfing aplenty down the front in the mosh pit. This Gen X suspects a few fellow Gen Xers got carried away, went a bit hard and were probably mainlining Voltaren in the morning.
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If you had told me a few months ago that I would be in a Melbourne pub at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon with 900 other (mostly) dudes to see a secret gig by ‘90s provocateurs (shit stirrers, ragbags – call them what you will) THIS IS SERIOUS MUM, I would have assumed you had dementia or at least long covid affecting your mental faculties. I mean it’s been 19 years since they last played anywhere. I mean a boy can dream but it seemed a finite impossibility.
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Absurdity meets brilliance in a way that has you shaking in your boots—that’s what it felt like at Hordern Pavilion on Friday night as thousands of drenched Sydneysiders arrived to witness TISM‘s ‘Death to Art‘ tour. The ‘Death to Art’ tour was a reminder of why TISM’s cult status endures. The night was a microcosm of everything brilliant about Australian live music: witty, sharp, and utterly unapologetic.
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absolute bedlam broke out during ‘(He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River’. Controversial at the time of release, the alt-club anthem has lost none of its intoxicating power, blending riffs, electronica and hooky absurdity to bring the Prince crowd to absolute fever pitch. If the show ended there, we would have walked away satisfied, but TISM had one last blast of overstimulation in the form of the riotous ‘Defecate On My Face’. It was apt for the second TISM show in eighteen years to end with a packed-out pub singing themselves hoarse to a song written about a fascist’s alleged coprophilia and one last chant of “TISM are wankers”.
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The album is great, its TISM in tip top shape. You could have never guessed there was a 20 year break. Like you put on Old Skool TISM and it just washes over you, perfection, the TISM you all knew and love is back.