Hot Dogma


Hot Dogma is the second studio album by the Australian alternative rock band TISM. It was released on 1 October 1990 and peaked at number 86 on the ARIA Charts. The title comes from a joining of the two phrases hot dog, a food, and dogma, a specific religious belief. An additional disc, Hot Dogma - The Interview Disc was added to initial sales copies and contains live responses by TISM to an unheard DJ’s questions.
On 18 November 2024, the album was reissued on CD and double LP, containing the full 24-song tracklist.

Reception

In a review of TISM’s sixth studio album The White Albun, Anton S Trees of FasterLouder compared it to Hot Dogma, where the latter is "filled with moments of introspection and reflection on the nature of self, existence and mortality – TISM examine the value of life. Most prominent amongst the examinations of mortality and the cyclical nature of existence is 'Life Kills'."
Steve Bell of theMusic.com.au website noticed it "quickly became a fan favourite but didn't set the world on fire commercially nor bother the charts, so TISM were soon unceremoniously dumped by Phonogram during 1991 and found themselves homeless."

Cover and liner notes

The cover of the album features what appear to be Chinese Red Guards carrying a large banner with “TISM” written across it and carrying what, on first look, appears to be Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, but is on closer inspection The TISM Guide To Little Aesthetics. The artwork closely resembled posters of the time of Mao's reign.
The Chinese on the cover translates into "The unification of the proletariat under the banner of TISM".
The back cover of the album has the track lists in Chinese, however the band have repeatedly claimed that the Asian division of Polygram released a version with the track titles in English. The titles are listed in English in the liner notes.
On the original 1990 CD release, the Chinese text wrapped around the cover art, as on the LP, but the 2024 reissue placed the entire text on the front of the digipak. The original LP release featured an inner sleeve with the liner notes, however this was changed to a gatefold sleeve on the reissue, with it instead containing inner sleeves with full lyrics to the album.

Track listings

CD, cassette and reissue LP versions

The unlisted segue and "Life Kills" are indexed as one 5:52-long track on the iTunes and Spotify releases.

''Hot Dogma – The Interview Disc''

LP copies of Hot Dogma were bundled with a pack-in 7" single, containing a humorous open-ended interview with TISM and blank spaces for a DJ to insert the questions. Both sides contain the same interview.

Questions

  • "Your new album is on PolyGram, will you change now that you're signed to a major label?"
  • "How did you guys come to be in a band?"
  • "Why don't you ever show your face?"
  • "Your live shows have a reputation for being pretty wild affairs. Do you deliberately set out to work up your audience?"
  • "What kind of people come to your shows?"
  • "Your new album Hot Dogma is pretty amazing - over an hour of music, all kinds of different styles; what can you tell us about it?"
  • "OK, so you obviously prefer not to give much away in interviews. Why is that?"
  • "I am a self-respecting DJ..."
  • "I do think I have a feel for what's going down..."
  • "I do have a certain duty towards my audience..."
  • "YES!"
The last four tracks on the disc are questions from TISM to the DJ.

''Hot Dogma (Sing Sing Sessions)''

On 17 and 18 March 1990, TISM recorded demos for what eventually became Hot Dogma at Sing Sing Studios. Six tracks from the session were released in 1995 on Collected Recordings 1986-1993, while the whole set of demos was eventually released on 18 August 2023, as part of the ongoing reissue campaign of TISM's discography, and hit #14 on the ARIA Australian Artist charts.
Notable inclusions are the first known studio recording of "Opium is the Religion of the Masses", a song previously only known from live recordings from the Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance era, and "Greece is Still Greece", which provided the backing music for the album version of "The TISM Finance Plan Offer", as well as "Too Cool for School, Too Stupid for Life", a song that had been performed several times by TISM in 1989 but never used on an album.

Tracklist

  1. Life Kills
  2. Wham Bam Thank You Imam*
  3. ExistentialTISM
  4. Greece is Still Greece
  5. The TISM Finance Plan Offer*
  6. Let's Form a Company
  7. Opium is the Religion of the Masses
  8. Put Your Dog to Sleep*
  9. The Ball That Doesn't Turn, but Goes Straight On With the Arm
  10. Whittle Away My Furniture
  11. My Generation
  12. Dazed and Confucius
  13. Naked Movie Star
  14. In Defence of Poetry*
  15. The TISM Nightsoil Cart and Horse Blues
  16. While My Catarrh Gently Weeps
  17. Too Cool for School / All You Don't Know and All You Don't Need to Know
  18. Get Thee in My Behind, Satan
  19. The Law of Repulsion After Orgasm*
  20. They Shoot Heroin, Don't They?
  21. Let's Club It to Death
  22. We Are the Champignons
  23. Kevin Borich Expressionism*
  24. The TISM Boat Hire Offer
  25. Whinge Rock
  • previously released