"I grew up in New Mexico and that's where Hydra Head started in '93, when I was a junior in high school. I started Hydra Head as a distribution, buying records from Ebullition, Gravity, Victory, Vermiform, Lookout, etc. - just about anything I could get rid of in my area - which wasn't much, really. After a while I wanted to get a little more involved in my work, thus deciding that starting a label would be the next logical step. I contacted a few bands that I liked, tried to do a compilation, and talked to some local bands, but nothing really panned out until I met Coalesce's roadie at the time (at a show I booked for them in Santa Fe in early '95). He gave me a tape of his band Vent, which would become the first Hydra Head release. That fall I moved to Boston to attend art school, and that's when the Vent 7" was released. After that I began making contacts with bands in the area such as Roswell, Corrin, Piebald, and Converge. After a couple of semi-successful 7"s and a CD things began to pick up, and over the course of a couple years it went from a bedroom distro/label to a full-time job after I graduated from college in '99. We've just been slowly growing since the time I came to Boston."
(from an interview with Aaron Turner, co-owner)