Here's what the press has had to say about the Fatima Mansions:
"Against Nature is the perfect way to be born again."--Sounds
"...staggering in its weight of ideas...never loses its capacity to suddenly stun you."--NME
"Fatima Mansions have muscle, tunes, a great name and the finest debut LP of the year."--Record Mirror
"Fatima Mansions--that very rare thing, a sound that sounds like nothing so much as itself."--20/20
"["Blues for Ceaucescu" is] alive with the sweat of fear and a burning desire for vengeance, two qualities sadly absent from so much of today's popular music."--NME, Single of the Week
"[Coughlan] is arrogant enough to cram his songs with contradictions...Coughlan is also clever enough to flirt with people's expectations of what pop music should be..."--The New York Times, July 1991
"...if you were to think Fatima Mansions likely to spit venom in the face of modern rock 'n' roll, making it safe once again for the pissed-off, you wouldn't be far from the truth...Viva Dead Ponies is practically a call to arms, an incendiary diatribe aimed squarely at fascists, vicars, drug abusers, and police...it was a chance to witness passion and rage manifested on stage...this is the hard stuff, the kind your mother warned you to stay away from."--Irish Voice, July 1991
"Viva Dead Ponies is a varied fevered and cranky scream-of-consciousness rumination on the corruption of power, a compelling mix of pop melodies, raging noise and compelling vocals."--Chicago Tribune, August 1991
"...the group hopes to capture rock's old outlaw image by overthrowing the sugarcoated commercialism prevalent on the pop charts today."--Time Magazine, August 1991
"[Viva Dead Ponies] is an embarrassingly rich collection of 20 songs that--with its cast of characters, including Nicolae Ceaucescu and Jesus Christ, its claim that God is an arms dealer, and its scattered talk of Islamic law and tandoori ovens--shows a grasp of world politics and irony beyond that of most any other rock band."--Entertainment Weekly, September 1991
"If U2 represents God's country in Ireland, then Fatima Mansions surely must dwell in that country's hell...The Mansions' facade is entirely their own. Perhaps rock's last angry man in aggressively passive times, Coughlan doesn't come to praise but to spew bile."--Rolling Stone, September 1991
"They play blistering, cynical modern rock that stands in marked contrast to the phoney romanticized visions of Ireland provided by bands like U2 and movies like The Commitments...wickedly funny, slyly political and resolutely anti-clerical, Viva Dead Ponies is a startling work by a major new talent."--New York Newsday, September 1991
"The Fatima Mansions are stark, furious, shout of outrage for the 90's...the ambience is bleak and often violent, but the combination of the lyrics with its startling range of musical influences, from guitar onslaughts to wistful melodies, lifts and distingluishes [Viva Dead Ponies] as one of the most worthwhile this year."--Irish Echo, September 1991
All right, enough hype, get me back to the meat of the matter.