Originally released in 2000, Iron is one of the most playful and distinctive albums in the COH catalogue. Ivan Pavlov channels a lifelong fascination with 1980s heavy metal, not by imitating it's riffs or volume, but by distilling what he describes as it's defining sonic character. Pavlov states, "The album was inspired by my teenage passion for the 80's heavy metal, and I think on IRON I wanted to focus on a specific frequency range common to the genre, the mid-range distortion grain."