With a bouncy groove and an explosive ending, “Magma” is a fan favorite from Ice, Death… which, of course, focuses on the substance it’s named after. Alongside the descriptions of the material itself, the band describes a “molten god” taking sacrifices and calls back to the Infest the Rats’ Nest track “Self-Immolate.” Like all songs from the album, “Magma” is based on a specific mode. For this track the band chose the Phyrigian scale. The lyrics were written by Stu, Ambrose, Joey, Cook and Lucas with the music being written and performed by Stu (bass/guitar/vocals/percussion/flute/clavinet/organ), Ambrose (keys/saxophone/percussion), Joey (guitar/bass) and Cook (guitar/keys).
The song made it’s live debut on 2022-10-04 at the Roseland Theater in Portland with a few other performances before the release of Ice, Death… on October 7th, 2022. After the album’s release, “Magma” would be in regular rotation for 2022 often appearing as a standalone towards the end of shows either as the second to last or last song — though there were exceptions such as 2022-10-21 where it came out of “The Dripping Tap” as the second song of the set. This placement largely remained in 2023 but it would start to appear in the middle of sets. Typically live performances of “Magma” are high energy and longer than the studio version, at least by a minute.