The welcome trend of legendary Irish bands re-releasing long-deleted classics continues with Toasted Heretic gifting us a re-mastered version of 1992’s Another Day, Another Riot on May 18.

Julian Gough & Co. had no problems conquering the indie charts but for a myriad of reasons they’ll be explaining soon in Hot Press, never managed to crossover to the mainstream.

“Toasted Heretic formed in Galway at the end of the 1980s,” we’re told in a missive from Heretic HQ. “Unusually literary for a pop band, and intensely independent, they produced their first two albums themselves, on cassette, and sold them initially by post and through bookshops. They signed a record deal for their third album, Another Day, Another Riot. The album produced a top ten hit in Ireland, ‘Galway And Los Angeles’; a song about Sinead O’Connor and the price of fame.

“They played London, Edinburgh, Paris and New York, and became cult heroes in France where, on their last tour, they played a live set on national radio, and headlined to 8,000 people in Toulouse.

“Drummer and producer Neil Farrell now creates highly regarded work under the name The Melancholy Thug. Singer and lyricist Julian Gough has since become an award-winning novelist and author of children’s books (twice shortlisted for an Irish Book of the Year Award). He has won Britain’s National Short Story Award, and also wrote the ‘End Poem’ – the narrative that ends the computer game Minecraft, which has gone on to sell 170 million copies.”

The date it’s hitting all streaming services is of huge heretical significance.

“May 18th is the 300th anniversary of the burning at the stake, by the Spanish Inquisition, of the oldest heretic in Europe, 95-year-old Maria Barbara Carillo. Unavailable anywhere for two decades, Another Day, Another Riot currently costs an eye-watering $902 for a second-hand CD copy on Amazon; it has never been available to stream.”

Despite being almost thirty years old, the record, as Julian Gough reflects, still resonates today.

“The post-religious world – the secular, technological world – has created new forms of heresy: there are things you can say – often perfectly true and unremarkable things! – that can get you excommunicated from society,” he says. “So we live once more in an exciting time of witch hunts and heresies. It is a time of marvellous equality, where anyone, regardless of sex, age, nationality, skin colour, or sexual orientation, can be attacked from both left and right for thinking the wrong thoughts out loud.

“We have secular taboos now that are as strong as the old religious taboos, as ruthlessly enforced, and as irrational. What better time for Toasted Heretic to emerge, blinking, from their bunker?”

Along with the fourteen songs a lot of you will know and love, the band have added the previously unreleased ‘Satellite Dishes’.

“It’s a beautiful song that should have come out thirty years ago,” Julian says. “But, in many ways, it works better now: It’s a song about being alone in a room, with just the hum of electronic devices for company, yearning for a lost past full of perfect moments you didn’t appreciate at the time. A good song to listen to, a year into a pandemic.”
We’ll have more – much more – on Toasted Heretic in our June issue!