Fatima Mansions

Listening to the first track on Fatima Mansions' 1989 debut album, the howling single "Only Losers Take the Bus," it's almost impossible to reconcile this barrage of sneering vocals, aggressively distorted guitars, and meat-cleaver-on-cast-iron drums with the much poppier albums leader Cathal Coughlan made as half of Microdisney earlier in the decade. While the rest of the album tends to be less noisy, with even a few acoustic guitars and synthesizers making their way into songs like "You Won't Get Me Home," Coughlan's lyrics are similarly aggressive throughout, with actions of overt and implicit violence in nearly every song and a grouchily misanthropic, almost nihilistic lyrical world-view throughout. Wisely, Coughlan leavens the tunes with dry humor and just enough of the melodic sophistication he learned off of Sean O'Hagan in their Microdisney days to keep Against Nature from being as monochromatic as many similar albums can be. Future albums like Viva Dead Ponies and Lost in the Former West would ratchet up both the anger and the noise, but they tend to miss the musical variety that makes Against Nature so compelling. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide