Decahedron grew out of the end of Frodus, when Shelby Cinca and Jason Hamacher started playing together again in 2002 and brought in Fugazi bassist Joe Lally to complete the trio. Cinca and Lally had become friends through Cinca's recording work on the first two Dead Meadow albums, released on Lally's Tolotta Records. Early on, the band also had demo writing sessions with Clark Sabine of Motorcycle Wars, a short-lived two-guitar configuration that didn't stick. The project took time to find its shape and purpose, but eventually it became clear there was more to it than an informal reunion.
In February of that year, Hamacher left for a three-month trip through Eastern Europe and Turkey, but not before tracking drums for the other two to work with. Cinca and Lally built songs around those recordings and realized the project had legs. Hamacher, writing from the Syrian plains, suggested the name The Black Sea for the region he was traveling through. That summer, under that name, the three self-recorded a 3-song EP released on Lovitt Records.
They reconvened with momentum and recorded a significant amount of new material, eventually completing most of what would become their full-length. The early Black Sea recordings leaned toward atmospheric, darker guitar-driven music, drawing inspiration from bands like The Church, but the sound gradually shifted into harder, more aggressive territory. Then came a legal problem: The Black Sea had been trademarked a decade earlier, and a name change was required. The album was completed with Lally on bass before he relocated to the west coast, and the band renamed themselves Decahedron: a ten-sided geometric solid, described by Cinca as "a monolithic force appearing in the minute details of nature and primordial universal mass." Johnathan Ford of Unwed Sailor, whose previous band Roadside Monument had recorded a split EP with Frodus on Tooth and Nail Records, came in as touring bassist. Whether the name change had anything to do with it or not, the music that followed felt closer in spirit to Frodus than anything they'd started with.
Disconnection_Imminent was released on Lovitt Records in April 2004. The band had already toured for three weeks in January and February with Engine Down, Statistics, and Moments in Grace, and in March played the Dillinger Escape Plan's South by Southwest showcase in Austin. After the album's release they set out on their first full US tour, and mid-run were invited to fill Denali's slot on the Plea for Peace tour alongside Darkest Hour and Cursive.
Ford departed after the tour. Cinca and Hamacher recorded a 6-song EP called 2005 in three days at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, VA, with Jake Brown of Moments in Grace on bass. Faced with an ongoing lack of a permanent bassist, they formalized what had become their reality, adopting a philosophy borrowed from jazz: no permanent bass player, just the right person for each recording or live situation.
In June 2005, Decahedron temporarily and indefinitely suspended all operations.
