“Urban Abyss” starts with someone trying not to give in to failure. By the end, humanity has contacted unknown beings in deep space and been absorbed into their hive mind.
Between those points, Iron Linings make room for Cold War conspiracy theories, cybernetic body parts, Innsmouth fishermen, robots outliving their creators, pirates, Snake Plissken and a direct nod to a video game about rolling the contents of the world into a ball. There is serious ground underneath much of it, particularly when Nate Berens writes about disillusionment, regret and continuing after you have run out of energy. There is also plenty that exists because he found the idea funny or thought the words sounded cool.
That mixture is central to the first full-length from the St Louis trio. Iron Linings formed in 2020, recorded the “Pressure Valve” EP and later appeared on the “Die Twice” split through The Ghost Is Clear Records. Their starting point brought 1990s hardcore into contact with noise rock, with Refused, Hot Snakes and Kowloon Walled City among the broad reference points.
On “Urban Abyss“, that music is angular, restless and quick to change direction. Noise rock and post-hardcore get pushed together into a dark, twisting rush, but the lyrics rarely stay in one emotional or fictional place for long. The record arrives August 7 through The Ghost Is Clear Records, and we are streaming it in full early!
Nate generally avoids closing down a song with one official explanation. He wants the words to leave enough space for someone else to hear another story in them, though several tracks on “Urban Abyss” come with very specific answers.
“I try to write lyrics that are opaque enough to be open to interpretation, except where otherwise noted, because I like when people get different things from people’s words,” he said. “That conversation and push/pull is always an interesting thing to me, not that there are swarms of humans conversing about my lyrics.”
Nate previously described “Error City” as a band favourite and one of the album’s faster, more energetic songs.
“‘Error City’ is a band favorite on the new album. It’s fast and energetic while maintaining the ferocity we strive for. Lyrically, it calls to mind some of the great science fiction of the last 100 plus years and, while it isn’t necessarily about one particular thing, it does derive its essence from those stories.”
Below, he takes the rest of “Urban Abyss” apart in his own words.
“Union John”
“To me, this song is about finding hope when you’re facing disillusionment and, if you do that long enough, being rewarded for that perspective. It’s pretty easy to get down on yourself and be glum, especially if it feels like you’re constantly failing, so this song is about finding that unity in your inner John, or Jane. Plus it’s a play on words, which everyone knows I love.”
“Red Mercury”
“I love conspiratorial nonsense, especially when it pertains to cold war era tech, or alleged tech. Red mercury is one of those ever elusive topics because there’s no real evidence that it ever existed or even can exist, but there are still people talking about it up until now. I kind of took the idea of a highly combustible substance and imagined that it escaped a lab and wreaked havoc, like ‘Return of the Living Dead’.”
“Error City”
“You could just imagine this song as being about replacing parts of your body with cybernetic components and you would be right. It’s sort of inspired by that bad Johnny Depp movie ‘Transcendence’ as well. Leaving humanity behind and becoming something else, etc.”
“Great Unifier”
“This song is about being a humble fisherman in the town of Innsmouth and slowly becoming a deep one, ultimately joining the old ones in the sea. I don’t know what else to say about it.”
“Frown Monument”
“The title is certainly a reference to the St. Louis arch, as stolen from a friend of mine. The lyrics are some kind of nonsense about esoteric bullshit and don’t really have a ton of meaning to me other than ‘sounding cool’. This one is open to interpretation if I have to spell it out for you.”
“Clump Spirit”
“Have you ever rolled various items of various sizes up into a ball, presented it to a sky being on a rainbow bridge, for him to turn it into a star, and had him chastise you for your inadequacy? Well, we’ve got a song for you! Naaaa, na, na, na, na, na, na, na….”
“Prison Muscles”
“More self-improvement lyrics about breaking free from the chains of life like that song by Wilson Phillips. Reckoning with one’s choices and choosing not to let them hold you back, etc.”
“Person Building”
“Man, I really am into robots and stuff on this record. I guess this song was inspired by the movie ‘Automata’ with Antonio Banderas, so I took a bunch of robot words and strung them together. I guess it’s about the idea of an automaton ‘living’ on long after its creator and what that might be like for it, were it to wonder about such a thing.”
“Sequencer”
“A song about being at your wit’s end and feeling completely drained, but deciding to stubbornly continue on anyway. You could read it as a song about not knowing when you’re beaten if you’re a glass half empty kind of person, or you could even consider it being about the idea of the sunken cost fallacy. But I like to think of it as being about grit and determination in going after one’s goal or goals.”
“Station 19”
“This is a song about the movie ‘Escape from New York’, so much so that I just stole Plissken’s, call him Snake, iconic line for the chorus. Also seems vaguely timely I guess.”
“Weather Eye”
“Ahoy? Is this some kind of pirate anthem? Methinks it is.”
“Void Machine”
“This is a song about creating a device that allows a signal to be sent into deep space, establishing contact with unknown beings with unknown intent, and those beings assimilating the human race into their hive mind. Not open to interpretation.”
“Urban Abyss” is out August 7 through The Ghost Is Clear Records.
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