SONG: Iron Cubes

SONG: “Iron Cubes”. (OGG version here.)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: Science, “Iron at Earth’s heart may take a surprising form“, 22 Oct 2026, as used in the post, “Iron forms cubes at the heart of the Earth.”

ABSTRACT:
The sound of this song is mostly a result of me diescovering the band Rosa Damask, which is yet another one of those bands that plays in that notional genre that I sometimes call “urban wyrd,” which is not goth, not mod, not indie, maybe kinda minimalist post-punk but in a very specific way or with a very specific vibe. The late-night unfamiliar city with the strange angles and the people you don’t entirely know doing things you maybe heard about but have never seen. Ipso Facto was a band that did it, and Sunset Rubdown with “Idiot Heart” and The Long Winters with “Unsalted Butter” and a lot of Interpol (but not all). I’ve messed with it before myself here and there. And now again.

Getting this one to the finish line got kind of crazy. Two different family health crises, a computer meltdown, and somehow I wound up in a short-play workshop/competition thing (got selected for a public reading, so that’s good, we’ll see if I’m in the next round or not).

So for weeks, I had this bass line and all the drums down, and the lead guitar (which is, believe it or not, actually a ukulele run through a bunch of amp effects), and well I didn’t know what it was going to be about until the 22nd, when I read this story about iron, molten iron, forming an unexpected crystal lattice structure under the conditions deep under the surface of the Earth. In another month, I could have jotted down a lyric that worked, recorded it softly late, late at night, and gotten something up. But that wasn’t in the cards.

So I used the time to do a little polishing. Rerecorded a few vocal takes. Reedited to make things tighter. Is the reverb right? Is *this* reverb right? How do I get the space without the echo?

It’s a good song. It paints the picture I want – the streetlights on asphalt that feels like it’s swaying underfoot, the sensation of magnetism swirling far below, the solid ground tilting in a way everyone else seems not to sense.

I’m turning my mind to a November song and two penitential covers… somehow. Eventually!

LYRICS:

I put my foot down … I was careful not to make sounds …
That might echo… In the underground
Where the bedrock melts / ( Bb-F#)

(tacit line)
Where the magnets spin like gravity, and the sidewalk spins you next to me
And the sounds ground down our angles. We can’t help ourselves / ( Bb-F#)

(tacit line)
You can feel the pull like a refrigerator door, as the streetlamps flash and you ask once more
And the metal goes brittle like a crystal … in your hands / ( Bb-F#)

There are iron cubes in the heart of the Earth, not hexagons like we thought at first
And the tiles that slide go deep inside There are iron cubes in the heart of the Earth x2 (last during Bb-F#)

(solo backbeat)
Magnetic fields … paint the skies
And underfoot … they’re crystalline
Seismic waves … move so slowly / ( Bb-F#)

The magma flowing … like the dice are rolling
So hot it’s glowing … We know our skin is showing
Beneath the surface … Here’s how that works
( Bb-F#) There are iron cubes… in the heart of the Earth.