How and when will you die? That question, of course, has fascinated centuries of thinkers, from philosophers plundering mortality's meaning to laypeople simply hoping to have their affairs in order when life comes to a close. In most cases, the end is unpredictable-- a car crash, a heart attack, a disease that comes on swiftly and decisively. But businesses often sense that doom is inevitable, that accounts receivable are no longer balancing accounts payable in a way that's sustainable. They have the rare choice of how to handle their own demise: They can choose to hide this from their customers and one day simply shutter the doors, or they can choose to throw themselves on the great public pyre, making a show of their mortality and allowing the faithful to plunder their wares another time or two.
In September, Hydra Head Records joined the latter caste: For nearly two decades, Hydra Head has been a fearless syndicate of loud, a label at the vanguard of risky releases paired with adventurous packaging. In 1999, for instance, they released Isis' excellent Sawblade EP-- notably, featuring a cover of Godflesh's "Streetcleaner"-- on a CD-R affixed to a full-size metallic sawblade, painted red or black. Consistent with Hydra Head founder Aaron Turner's ecumenical vision of heavy, they embraced the grindcore of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the wretched malevolence of Khanate, the noise purges of Merzbow, the arithmetic bludgeon of the Austerity Program, and the astral wonder of Pyramids, to name a few.
The list of accomplishments is exhausting. It exhausted Hydra Head's funds, too, leading the label to announce the first of two going-out-of-business fire sales in September: Enthusiasts could buy bundles of backstock at incredibly deep discounts, with the hope of paying the bills and finishing the final releases. Two months later, Hydra Head put test pressings, original artwork, and even Turner's Les Paul on sale with the hope of raising enough money to keep the label’s sizable back catalogue in permanent circulation. The willingness of customers to spend $800 on a Torche and Boris 10" or $180 on an Isis box set became a functional tribute to the label, a way to push it into some future while kowtowing to its expiring glory.
Hydra Head's final (for now) release has much the same effect: A split between Godflesh/Jesu leader Justin K. Broadrick under his new solo moniker, JK Flesh, and prolific electronic noise insurgent Dominick Fernow as Prurient, the six-track Worship is the Cleansing of Imagination serves as a cross-generational cycle between two aggressive sonic explorers. Broadrick's three tracks here are the more concussive, comprising electronic drums massive enough to suggest EBM on steroids and damaged textures occasionally abrasive enough to be classified as power electronics. His opener, "Fear of Fear", is a savage and short trip, a cyclone of a beat rumbling through fields of bass and blown-out guitars. Fernow focuses less on a pulse, instead using loops and layers to build a cyclone of sound that he either subsequently pulls apart or simply lets collapse. He leads with "Chosen Books", which matches Broadrick's gambit by dogpiling roars and whirs and hums until the frame of the sound system begins to quiver. These are similar but separate paths to the same plane of aggression, an idea that could serve as the retroactive Hydra Head mantra.
The best cuts on either side bear out that idea, too: "Deceiver" is Broadrick's most provocative and ambitious cut here. It opens as an industrial dirge, the toll of a church bell stretched into a subterranean groan. That sound cycles throughout the piece, while Broadrick adds and removes layers like a marionette. The hyperkinetic beat occasionally bursts open to douse the track in noisy shrapnel and low-end torture. "Deceiver" casts Broadrick as the controller of his past, able to funnel his experiences into these intense five minutes. Worship closes with "I Understand You", one of the most strangely beautiful pieces of music in the catalogues of Prurient or Hydra Head. Fernow wrestles simultaneously with disparate sets of impulses, attempting to thread a punishing squelch sustain around a keyboard line that hovers just on the horizon. The din overtakes the melody for a bit, but Fernow eventually pulls both themes back together before letting the keyboard disappear entirely. The noise spreads like ivy on a wall of disappearing ruins.
Both Broadrick and Fernow share the broad musical view implicitly espoused by Hydra Head for the last two decades. Broadrick's oeuvre stretches from the atavistic blast of Napalm Death's debut and the militant stomp of Godflesh to the diaphanous loom of Jesu and the exploratory throb of Techno Animal. In Prurient, Fernow has wrestled with noise and poetry, corrupted beats and rhythm-less roars. He's made black metal in Ash Pool, muted and mutated pop melodies in Vatican Shadow, and gone for full-on dance bombast in Cold Cave. If Hydra Head is indeed done, this is an excellent and appropriate ending for a big-eared label never confined by expectations of its output or intentions. These six tracks provide heaviness in a half-dozen different ways, a functional and fitting elegy for an imprint that achieved that mission with enviable consistency.
