The Many Heads of Aaron Turner

As the founder of Hydra Head Records and the frontman and guitarist of Isis, Aaron Turner has become one of the most important figures in modern metal. Before clearing eyes and ears Wednesday at Emo's with Torche and Intronaut, Turner graces Into the Void.

Into the Void: Hydra Head Records has released or is getting ready to release a slew of killer albums: Clouds, Jesu, Zozobra, and Big Business. What’s your role like these days with the label?
Aaron Turner: Basically, I get to do what I want to do now, which is essentially A&R, for lack of a better term, and art direction, which entails overseeing all of the graphic output. I also do a good portion of the layouts and artwork myself.

ITV: How are you finding out about some of these new bands? Do you see them while on tour, or do they come to you?
AT: It really depends. Some bands have been recommended to us by people we know and trust. Some bands comprise members of bands that we have worked with in the past. Once in a rare while, we’ve chosen to work with a band based on a demo submission. Here and there along the travels of Isis, I’ve discovered a band that’s either opened for us or passed off a CD.

ITV: If you were to define a mission statement for Hydra Head, what would it be?
AT: I’d have to put some serious thought into that to make it anything substantial. When I started out the label by myself 10 or 11 years ago, the thing I really wanted to do most of all was to find bands that push the envelope of whatever realm they inhabit but also comprised interesting people that I could get along with on a personal level. Our focus has been on heavy music, but it hasn’t been completely relegated to that. Even the term "heavy" implies a lot of things beyond metal.

ITV: A lot of the labels I really dig – Hydra Head, Ipecac, Ecstatic Peace, SST – have some sort of musician behind the scenes. Do you think it’s necessary to have a little bit of the perspective for a record label?
AT: I actually hadn’t thought about that a great deal, but now that you mention it, that seems to often be the case. I don’t know that it’s necessary; I just think that you have to have someone who's got some sort of vision, whether they’re a musician or not. Perhaps there’s a little bit more consistency with labels that are musician-owned and -operated.

ITV: What do you hope Hydra Head gets out of something like a South by Southwest showcase?
AT: I don’t really have any hopes for it. I just hope that people who are attending it can get something out of our bands. We’ve never been industry players, and we are not really hoping to get major label interest in bands to sell them off or anything. If anything, it’s sort of a statement of who we are and what we are trying to achieve. It seems that our South by Southwest shows are largely attended by fans rather than industry people, so I like that aspect of it. We don’t really care if what we are doing is commercially viable. We know that it’s good, and here it is.

ITV: You recently joined Twilight, right? Have you guys started recording? What’s that been like so far?
AT: Nothing has happened so far in terms of direct participation on my part. Basically, Blake [Judd, Nachtmystium frontman] and Jeff gave me the invitation, and I gladly accepted. Supposedly, I am going to be getting some rough recordings while I am on the road, so I can start listening and cooking up ideas. Beyond that, I think after the next Isis tour is over, we’re going to try to have a West Coast session that I can participate in.

ITV: What do you anticipate your role being in that group?
AT: It’s hard to say. It seems like those guys are pretty open to full collaboration, having everybody involved contribute ideas to the songwriting and the production of the whole record. Hopefully, we’ll all be able to feed off each other and brew up some darkness. They’re all people whose music I appreciate individually, and it’s exciting for me to be working in another group outside of Isis, because basically every other side project I have done has been with only a handful of other people. It'll be interesting for me to begin working with people I’ve never really collaborated with before on that level.

ITV: Speaking of collaborations, the In the Fishtank series with Aerogramme really surprised me with how beautiful it all sounded. I thought it was just a terrific EP. What were those sessions like for you?
AT: They’re kind of a blur, to be honest. They were in Holland, so that’s an indicator of the atmosphere. It was very spontaneous, which for me is great. Those guys were very easy to work with. We had toured with them before, so we had a pretty good idea of where they were coming from on a personal level, and we knew we could get along. If anything, I think it was an indicator of what can happen given more time and resources to do that sort of thing, perhaps encouragement to try something like that again.

ITV: With Isis’ latest record, In the Absence of Truth, you seem to be trying to push yourself a lot more vocally in terms of using actual singing and melodies and kind of using that more to shape the texture of the record.
AT: I feel like it’s been a gradual process for me. I started playing around with it just a little on Celestial, which is our first full-length, and ever since then I’ve been experimenting with it more and more. Part of the reason I felt driven to do that is the evolution of the music itself; I felt like as we went on the music changed. There was a larger degree of melody and space. I think that I’ve tried to do only what is appropriate for the music.

Head Shot

Heresi
Psalm II (Hydra Head)
Like Xasthur, Sweden’s Heresi is a one-man black-metal monster that harnesses the unholy trinity of guitars, drums, and beastly growls, which are spewed in an unintelligible tongue. A five-song EP, Psalm II flies like a bat toward hell, spiraling toward doom and destruction that’s best harnessed in opener “Liotte.”

Khlyst
Chaos Is My Name (Hydra Head)
This is the sound of night terrors. Khanate bassist James Plotkin and Thorr’s Hammer demon hunter Runhild Gammelsaeter join forces as Khlyst for Chaos Is My Name, a textured abyss of feedback, blast beats, and piercing vocals that winds slowly down the inferno in eight drawn-out movements. It’s not complete chaos, but it's painful as hell to endure.