Post-rock
Decibel Books will publish “Deconstructing Towers: The Story Of Hydra Head Records” in early December, a book of over five hundred pages about the label that released Isis, Botch, Cave In, Converge, Pelican, Jesu, Torche, Boris, Sunn O))) and Merzbow. The author is journalist Shane Mehling, bassist of Great Falls, and the edition is hardcover with a 32-page colour insert and cover art by Aaron Turner.
Turner, singer and guitarist of Isis and today also of Neurosis, started Hydra Head in 1993 in New Mexico, as a distributor while still in high school. The label moved to Boston in 1995, the year of its first release, a Vent seven-inch, and didn’t become full-time work until 1999. The wind-down was announced in 2012, and it closed in 2020, with album rights returned to each band.
The book gathers interviews with artists, former bandmates and ex-employees. “We were always freaking out about how the hell we were going to pay for records that were already at the printer,” says Turner. Cave In guitarist Adam McGrath says in it that “we didn’t realise how strange the music industry is, with all these characters.”
The excerpt Decibel has published as a preview covers the bidding war for Cave In following “Jupiter”, in the early 2000s: the band ended up signing with RCA in 2001, and Hydra Head kept the vinyl rights. Pre-orders are already open at the magazine’s shop; no price has been announced.
Text by Marçal Bonastre