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The only question left is "Will people get it?" Probably not. Such is TISM's lot. At 71 minutes De Rigueurmortis is one damned rigorous listen, and first time around it's as reckless, overbearing, hostile, hilarious and epic as Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance or Hot Dogma and makes you realise how relatively straightforward TISM's last two albums were.
True enough, there's dumb pun titles aplenty, like Would The Last Person To Leave Please Turn Out The Enlightenment? but there's a snide sting in the tail, and even Thou Shalt Not Britney Spear and Honk If You Love Fred Durst prove less obvious than first appearances may suggest. On the grimly laid-back Boot Party, Fourteen Years in Rowville and Schoolies Week they fulfil the threat of www.tism.wanker.com that they might become some twisted trip-hop Cold Chisel turning the observational eye of their finely-honed hatred on sunstruck suburbia. Then on one of the many, many untitled interludes Ron Hitler-Barassi hits his own heart of darkness, and for a moment there's a breathless sense of exactly what sadness and hardship have motivated TISM, what it means to remain devout outsiders knowing they will never receive the recognition their efforts deserve.
Thou Shalt Not Britney Spear could teach Blink 182 a thing about cut and paste punk, while Come Back DJ Your Record Is Scratched and Fatboy Slim Dusty have the unrelenting riff of the dance-rock thing nailed even as they work to bury it. BFW is hands-down the best album closer you willhear this year. But will people get it? Will they want to? Whether De Rigueurmortis is a pop hit or another anguished cry from the wilderness appears as random and as heart-breaking as the Federal election result. It's a poor show that new label FMR have seen fit to censor the (hardly litigious) slight at their sacred cash cow on BFW, but this fault aside De Rigueurmortis is TISM undiluted, ferocious and horribly funny.
The Connoisseur's Edition containing the bonus disc one act rock opera 2Pot Screama comes highly recommended. Their satanic majesty's rock eisteddfod proves an inspired, earnest mess and neatly fulfils the cover art's promise of a vast, sprawling prog-rock concept album insight into the darkness, the threat of Australia. It's good to have the magnificent bastards back.
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