It\u2019s April 1990, and Coughlan and his band The Fatima Mansions<\/a> have released Blues for Ceausescu, their bulldozing opus. Over its six minutes the tune clobbers the listener with pounding drums and industrial guitars that shudder and seethe, as furious as an acid bath brought to the boil.<\/p>\n But the real pummelling comes courtesy of Coughlan\u2019s lyrics, which anticipate the hollowing-out of western democracy, the rise of the far right and the corruption of the British elite to the point where a despot such as Ceausescu could easily have blended in. \u201cGo to England … Call yourself King Charles III \/ Nobody will notice \/ Nobody will be alarmed \/ There is no constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s prophesying the rebirth of fascism. Cathal was ahead of the curve,\u201d Aindr\u00edas \u00d3 Gr\u00faama, the band\u2019s guitarist, says from his home in Germany.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you could see is the complacency of the West when the Berlin Wall came down, and it was sort of, \u2018Oh well, that\u2019s all over now,\u2019\u201d says Nick Allum, the Fatima Mansions drummer, who became professor of research methodology at the University of Essex. <\/p>\n \u201cWe won it and that\u2019s all fine. And it was kind of saying, \u2018Oh, hang on a minute, you know, it\u2019s not over. And, actually, we\u2019re not so great ourselves in the West.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The two musicians are dialling in to talk about their work with Coughlan as Against Nature, The Fatima Mansions\u2019 first album, from 1989, gets a long-overdue vinyl rerelease. This pressing includes Blues for Ceausescu in all its ranting, scorched-earth glory, following the expanded tracklist that Coughlan compiled for a digital reissue in 2021.<\/p>\n The new vinyl version is the first release from Inis Records<\/a>, the label that Tom Coll<\/a>, the Fontaines DC<\/a> drummer, established with Michael Roe, of the Dublin postrock group Adebisi Shank. Coll\u2019s involvement is fitting, as \u00d3 Gr\u00faama sees a connecting line between the Mansions and Fontaines DC. \u201cThey have similar attitudes,\u201d he says. \u201cThey have something to say, and they\u2019re going to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n When Coughlan died, in May 2022, at the age of 61, much of the attention at the time focused on his first band, Microdisney<\/a>, a soft-rock collaboration with Sean O\u2019Hagan championed by Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records, who signed them when they moved from Cork to London. He approvingly described Coughlan as \u201ca little bit scary\u201d; John Peel, the influential BBC DJ, said he would happily listen to Coughlan singing the phone book.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Cathal Coughlan obituary: Singer and songwriter who never stopped exploring musical frontiersOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n But the falling apart of Microdisney, in 1988, was not the end of Coughlan\u2019s story. There was another chapter, one in which he sloughed off the slick, tasteful vibes of his first band and pursued a rawer, more furious sound that better expressed the anger burning inside him.<\/p>\n With Microdisney, \u201cthe medium was getting in the way of the message\u201d, according to Paul McDermott, who as well as being assistant principal of Rathmines College in Dublin is a music historian who explores Against Nature in his podcast<\/a> To Here Knows When: Great Irish Albums Revisited. <\/p>\n \u201cThat transition you hear on Against Nature \u2013 things like Valley of the Dead Cars or Only Losers Take the Bus \u2013 the music is a lot more immediate and in-your-face. It matches the message. The listener had to do a lot more work with his lyrics in Microdisney.\u201d<\/p>\n Coughlan had his misgivings about how Microdisney unravelled. \u201cI have many regrets about how that ending came about, and in particular the tunnel vision which fuelled my apocalyptic over-reaction to the band\u2019s circumstances in the final two years,\u201d he told me<\/a> in 2020. <\/p>\n \u201cCompared to situations I\u2019ve been in since then, this was truly survivable stuff. But I just wasn\u2019t grown up, not enough to have perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n Those regrets were still knocking around in his head as Against Nature came together. It was made while The Fatima Mansions were still in a Protean shape, according to Allum. <\/p>\n \u201cMicrodisney broke up in the summer of 1988, and by October or November we were rehearsing. It wasn\u2019t called Fatima Mansions; it was called The Freedom Association. But it was pretty quickly after Microdisney.\u201d<\/p>\n They recorded the album on the fly, its patchwork quality reflecting the circumstances in which it came together. Musically, it\u2019s all over the place: there are midtempo ballads that could have fitted on a Microdisney album (The Day I Lost Everything), angry rockers that anticipated Blues for Ceausescu (Only Losers Take the Bus) and playful pop influenced by Erasure and Pet Shop Boys (13th Century Boy).<\/p>\n But it\u2019s the articulate, heartfelt anger that is the record\u2019s most striking aspect. Rage had long fuelled Coughlan\u2019s songwriting. He had grown up in modest circumstances in Glounthaune, an upper-middle-class village outside Cork city distinguished by its cluster of huge gated houses; as a bursary student at the blue-blooded Presentation College, he was a have-not in a world of haves. <\/p>\n Later, studying at University College Cork, he bridled against the stifling conservatism of 1980s Ireland. That outsider\u2019s perspective is the defining quality of Against Nature.<\/p>\n McDermott points to the lyrics. \u201cYou Won\u2019t Get Me Home, that\u2019s about Aids. The way he says, \u2018They put a wall up around the town to keep her plague within,\u2019 he said that was about how people were treated when they had Aids. <\/p>\n \u201cThe other one that is really obvious is Bishop of Babel, all about immigration and London. There\u2019s that gorgeous line, \u2018We don\u2019t talk the same, so we don\u2019t talk at all\u2019 \u2013 the Irish in London.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0Sean O\u2019Hagan: \u2018That lovely, beautiful humanity I had with Cathal Coughlan in those later years was amazing\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n By this time The Fatima Mansions had found their definitive sound: explosive, confrontational and with righteous anger sweating from its pores. In other words, the opposite of Microdisney\u2019s polish. <\/p>\n In this they were drawing on Coughlan\u2019s growing fascination with industrial groups such as Ministry, Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle \u2013 and their credo that it was better to leave an audience shocked and outraged than indifferent.<\/p>\n Coughlan certainly wanted to get away from Microdisney, according to \u00d3 Gr\u00faama. \u201cHe wanted everything to be stripped down. Try and do everything as quickly as possible, live if possible \u2013 and a lot noisier. I didn\u2019t realise how much more guitar he wanted. And that became more and more apparent. A year [after Against Nature] we recorded Blues for Ceausescu, which became the hallmark of the Mansions sound.\u201d<\/p>\n Coughlan\u2019s refusal to compromise was never more obvious than in May 1992, when The Fatima Mansions were invited to open for U2<\/a> on the European leg of their Zoo TV tour. <\/p>\n This led to a flashpoint that, to Coughlan\u2019s lasting frustration, would catalyse the idea of him as the perpetually splenetic crackpot of 1990s indie. <\/p>\n The trouble unfolded over two nights in Milan. On the first, the band were heckled by an aggressive crowd. On the second, Coughlan took his revenge: he walked onstage wearing the strip of FC Barcelona \u2013 a calculated provocation given that the Spanish team had defeated the Italian side Sampdoria in the final of the European Cup 24 hours earlier.<\/p>\n With boos ringing out, he said something rude about the pope before miming a gesture with a shampoo bottle shaped like the Virgin Mary. There was uproar, though U2, by all accounts, saw the funny side. (Rumours that their friend Gavin Friday<\/a> had secured the bottle for the U2 archive have, alas, been debunked.)<\/p>\n \u201cThey all seemed to be quite amused. It was a no-win situation,\u201d Coughlan later said. \u201cThere were two nights. On the first night we nearly got wiped out. On the second night we decided to wipe them out.\u201d<\/p>\n The furore didn\u2019t do the Mansions any harm in the short term: that September they went top 10 in the UK when their trip-hop-tinged, surprisingly tuneful cover of Bryan Adams\u2019s (Everything I Do) I Do It for You was released as a double A-side with Manic Street Preachers<\/a>\u2019 take on Suicide Is Painless, the theme from the Korean War-set TV series Mash. <\/p>\n They would go on to release four more albums before Coughlan stepped away, creatively exhausted and burned out by tensions with the group\u2019s record label.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was nothing and nobody like them, which was clearly how they preferred it. But it did kind of mean that nobody really knew what to do with them or make of them,\u201d said the journalist Andrew Mueller, who in the 1990s had prominently championed Coughlan in the pages of Melody Maker.<\/p>\n \u201cAs was the case with Microdisney, however, people are still talking about them, while very much not doing so about many of their better-selling contemporaries.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t think it would be listened to 30 years down the road. But here we are. Against Nature is now 38 years ago,\u201d \u00d3 Gr\u00faama says. \u201cThat\u2019s a bloody long time for music to last, especially in pop.\u201d<\/p>\n Blues for Ceausescu has proved especially enduring. Nearly 40 years on, its warning that the end of the cold war did not mean the end of history reads as chillingly prescient. <\/p>\n It stands as a testament to Coughlan, an artist who had more to say about the state of the world than almost any other songwriter of his generation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was basically saying that something felt really wrong about the triumphalism expressed by the western cold warriors on the demise of communist hegemony in eastern Europe,\u201d Coughlan told me in an email in May 2020, 21 months before Russia invaded Ukraine<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cI truly believe that we\u2019re still living with ever-growing echoes of that.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Forerunner:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/RA7TYIPJM5FIBNSYYN45IHA5K4.jpg\")
Forerunner: Cathal Coughlan with Microdisney in London in 1987. Photograph: David Corio\/Redferns <\/p>\n![\"Irish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/HNCJSRAJ5ZD4DHFFOHGBGGNNFU.jpg\")
The Fatima Mansions in New York, 1990. Photograph: Michael Putland\/Getty Images ![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/FNPR46IIUNDV7JAJTPNCK5QQZM.jpg\")
The Fatima Mansions: the band on stage in Minneapolis in 1994. Photograph: Jim Steinfeldt\/Ochs Archives\/Getty <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/536HU4F45JF45MVH2A62MGFXQM.jpg\")
The Fatima Mansions: Cathal Coughlan in Belgium in 1992, during a support slot with U2. Photograph: Gie Knaeps\/Getty <\/p>\n