On this day in 1919, a 30-foot-high, 2.3 million gallon sugary tsunami of death unleashed its fury on the streets of Boston. 21 people died, and many more were injured.

This real-life molasses disaster is the subject of a song named after it, by metal band Outnumber the Living.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Bandcamp (lyrics follow):

Our greed had gone too far
So by some act of fate
With a banshee’s groan
The tower collapsed and sweet death spilled forth

The slow rush of inevitable disaster
A crawling mass
Consuming and suffocating
Trees uprooted
Our strongest towers toppled
Overwhelming in a tidal wave of childhood dreams

Everything I had to give is now
Lost in the flood
The enchantment of being entombed
By a sweet embrace
Is too hard to resist

Caught up in rapture
None can turn away
Then it’s upon you
Now a writhing mass of syrup and the dying

A piece of cake, you’d say
Such a thing could be outrun

It keeps holding on
It keeps holding on
It keeps ahold
It’s everything we are

It has my legs
But it will never have
The love I share with you

It’s otherworldly
Some alien presence
Has chosen its time
To feast

Everything I had to give is now
Lost in the flood
The enchantment of being entombed
By a sweet embrace
Is too hard to resist

It feeds on all our fears and passions