Featuring seven members on stage,TISM has a legendary cult following grown from the mid-1980s when they started to play live,and reaching a broader audience with the release of 1988’s debut albumGreat Truckin’ Songs of the Renaissance.
Always masked and using provocative pseudonyms,TISM went on to release five more studio albums,played pubs and festivals around Australia,and won two ARIA awards from six nominations. However,it’s the past 19 years,according to singer Ron Hitler-Barassi,that he’s most proud of so far.
“This 19 years of silence on our behalf,has actually been an art event,” he said. “We produce no music,we do not meet or talk to each other,we don’t play live and nobody thinks about TISM at all. I think it’s been our greatest achievement,and I know many of our critics do as well.”
Good Things will take place in Melbourne,Sydney and Brisbane in December and feature international acts Bring Me The Horizon,Deftones,Lacuna Coil and Soulfly alongside Australian bands Regurgitator,Cosmic Psychos,Kisschasy and more. Catering mostly to fans of rock,metal and punk music,Good Things was first held in 2018.
Humphrey B. Flaubert,percussionist,singer and founding member of TISM,said “great art takes a long time to ferment”,and while pleased about the upcoming shows,he stressed people should not be overly nostalgic about the past.
“It’s important … particularly in the difficult times everyone has been enduring,to break our art event silence[and] point out that things weren’t actually that good,all those years ago. And we’re here as proof.”
Flaubert suggested “pretty much everything we’ve released” could be controversial if played live in 2022,while Hitler-Barassi said “the silence was safer” and the band was embracing a new style of music for their upcoming shows.