40 Years of Chaos · EP.01 — HYDRA: The Roots

Hydra were born in Falconara Marittima in the mid-1980s, a power/thrash metal quintet whose historic rehearsal room was the cemetery caretaker's house, a space shared with Kurnalcool. An almost cinematic detail that became part of the myth of the early line-up, long before a single tape existed.

The Marche scene of that era was alive. Hydra moved in the same circuit as Strana Officina, Sabotage and Fil di Ferro, in the years when Italian metal was starting to give itself a structure: the first independent labels, the first fanzines, international tape-trading. Between 1988 and 1991 the band recorded three self-produced demo tapes. Near the Graveyard (1988) carried literary, visionary titles, Phial of Eternity, Intimations of Immortality with its Wordsworth reference, and a nine-minute closer, Lucy Gray, an absolute exception for the thrash of the time. Sons of Rhan (1989) opened with an eight-minute instrumental intro and pulled its titles from the Conan and Robert E. Howard universe. Into the Crypta (1991) was shorter and more direct, but kept the epic breadth, ending with a live take of The Havoc recorded on 9 June 1991.

Long tracks, expansive intros, a compositional ambition cultivated in silence: everything that would become the AydrA trademark was already there, before the name changed.