We report a relativistic many-body calculation for the hybrid meson spectru
m utilizing a QCD inspired Coulomb gauge Hamiltonian. Our approach is compr
ehensive and unifies the quark and gluon sectors. The vacuum and quasiparti
cle properties are generated by a BCS transformation, whereas the meson and
glueball spectra are described by the TDA and RPA approximations. Using th
e quark and gluon gap solutions, we formulate hybrid mesons as states compo
sed of three quasiparticles (quark, antiquark and gluon) and compute the ma
ss spectrum variationally with trial wavefunctions. We predict the importan
t exotic 1(-+) states to have masses above 2 GeV in rough agreement with la
ttice and flux tube models, implying the recently observed resonances are n
ot hybrids.