"This song's our cry against man's inhumanity to man; and man's inhumanity to child." - Dolores O'Riordan.
A seething condemnation of the IRA, it was backed by pummelling, distorted guitars while O'Riordan's lilt was contorted into a primal howl: "What's in your head Zombie? Zomb-ie-ey, ay-ey, ay-ey, aooowwwww."
Her pain was real: Zombie was a visceral response to the death of two children in an IRA bombing in the Cheshire town of Warrington. Three-year-old Johnathan Ball was killed when two bombs hidden in litter bins detonated on a busy shopping street in March 1993. Tim Parry, aged 12, died five days later.
O'Riordan, who was on tour at the time, found herself deeply affected by the tragedy. "I remember seeing one of the mothers on television, just devastated," she told Vox magazine in 1994. "I felt so sad for her, that she'd carried him for nine months, been through all the morning sickness, the whole thing and some… prick, some airhead who thought he was making a point, did that."
The singer was particularly offended that terrorists claimed to have carried out these acts in the name of Ireland"
"The IRA are not me. I'm not the IRA," she said. "The Cranberries are not the IRA."
"When it says in the song, 'It's not me, it's not my family,' that's what I'm saying. It's not Ireland, it's some idiots living in the past."
Released in September 1994, Zombie went on to become the band's biggest-selling single, reaching number one in Germany, Australia and France; and topping the US alternative rock charts.
