May 10, 1996 -- Ireland's Cranberries may have found a cure for hyper-happiness and excessive good cheer. It's an album, the band's latest, called "To The Faithful Departed," and, yes , much of it is about people of the deceased persuasion, and, yes, the song about John Lennon ends with gun-shot sound effects. Singer Delores O'Riordan shared the sorrow with us recently.

MTV: With a title like "To The Faithful Departed," you expect the Cranberries to be dealing with the topic of death, and they do, but there are also songs about love and life and "Salvation," the first single takes on all three in what some could see as a "just say no to drugs" anthem for the 90's.

DOLORES O'RIORDAN, The Cranberries: It's not so much like an anti-drug song. It's kind of anti- the idea of becoming totally controlled by anything, any substance at all, because I know what's it's like. And it wasn't a nice experience and it didn't get me anywhere. It just confused me more.

MTV: So you

tried some of these drugs that you were talking about in the song.

O'RIORDAN: Oh no, I didn't try heroin. I was just trying to find the answer in getting out of it, whether it was drinking or whatever. I'm not going to elaborate. But it just, basically, any substances don't really help. Reality is reality, and unfortunately, no how much you go away, you come back, and it's always here.

MTV: Two of the albums' tracks were debuted last year, during the Cranberries MTV "Unplugged" performance. One of them, called "I'm Still Remembering," was written six months after Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain committed suicide.

O'RIORDAN: It was kind of sad how, you know, sometimes, when people die, you expect there to be a silence. But there wasn't a silence. You know what RIP means. It means "rest in peace." And I suppose it was kind of sad because nobody seemed to want to let it be. Everybody was just like, boom! It was just a big media thing, so it was kind of sad.

MTV:

Other tracks on the album deal with such somber issues as the war in Bosnia, and the children who are victims of war -- all of which seems to have affected Dolores, who we asked if she considered bringing children into such a world.

O'RIORDAN: I think it's debatable. I love kids and I would love to but, it's a pretty miserable old planet, all the same. Man! (laughs) But I imagine having kids and it's like, there's so much crap going on. Right now, I couldn't deal with that pressure. So I'll hold off for a few years.