The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower

The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower
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Album	Dark in Here
Released	June 25, 2021
Length	3:20
Previous Track	"Parisian Enclave"
Next Track	"Mobile"

The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower is the second song on the album Dark in Here.

Lyrics[]

Stick bright reflective tape to the collar of your shirt
Mind your business and you won't get hurt
Be true to the things you said you'd be true to
Always keep your objective in view

Keep two working contacts among your effects
See the tall poppies with their tender fragile necks
Solomon in all his glory not arrayed like these
Bending in the wind like pilgrims on their knees

Those who came to learn these lessons
Left no trace of their presence

Always have a flashlight, just in case
Show the world your true face
Burn such fuel as you need to burn
Learn to wait your turn

Count the heads in the bunks before you turn in for the night
Lace your boots up tight
Secure the rope to the pole
Keep a sense of wonder when you finally reach your goal

Those who came to learn these lessons
Left no trace of their presence

Leave nothing behind
Keep a positive thought in your mind
If you can't find anything nice to say
Drift away

Retain a sense of grace when it's time to cut the cord
Crack through the crust, fall to your knees, and praise the Lord
Listen for the voices calling out from down below
Steady as you go
What will they say back home about you
Who always kept your objective in view
Whose effects included contacts that finally got found
Inside the Arctic Circle, scattered on the ground

Those who came to learn these lessons
Left no trace of their presence

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

"The thing that inspired me was the story [in the Weekly World News] of how some Russian engineers had pierced the vault of Hell that was underneath the earth. And this like... there's something, I can't call it primal, but it's very basic in me, that like, when I hear something like... well, the thing is, the piercing of the vault of Hell which lay undernearth the earth: that was exciting to me. But then, when the story reported that there was an audio recording of it... well, that's me all over. Like these days it would be like a shaky video, and that's fine and Blair Witch-y, you know what I mean, but nah, nah. An audio recording of Hell. I just loved the idea that these engineers who were working on an oil rig in Siberia, they pierce the vault of Hell, they hear the screams of the damned, they say 'Does anybody have a tape recorder? This is pretty wild down here.' You know? So I read that story, and of course there's a longer story explaining what it actually was, but I'm not interested in a longer story. I'm interested in what happened when the Russian engineers pierced the vault of Hell. As a sidenote, it was in a place in Siberia called Kola, and there used to be a tower there, because in fact the hole they were digging was for a long time the deepest hole on the earth, right? For a long time, you couldn't dig any deeper than that one. It's only about this big around but it went down further than anything had ever gone. At some point after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tower was destroyed and nobody knows who did it. This is called 'The Destruction of the Superdeep Kola [sic] Borehole Tower.'" -- 2021-08-19 - Gothic Theatre - Englewood, CO

Things Referenced in this Song[]

The Kola Superdeep Borehole, located on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, is the deepest man-made hole (by vertical depth) on Earth. The project was shut down in 1994 and the tower structure over the borehole has been partially destroyed.

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Dark in Here

Track list: "Parisian Enclave" • "The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower" • "Mobile" • "Dark in Here" • "Lizard Suit" • "When a Powerful Animal Comes" • "To the Headless Horseman" • "The New Hydra Collection" • "The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums" • "Before I Got There" • "Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review" • "Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light"