40 Years of Chaos · EP.02 — From Hydra to AydrA

Between the end of 1991 and the start of 1992 two new members joined the band. Mauro Pacetti came in on bass and vocals, screams and growls. Francesco Olivi arrived on guitar from Anathema, a local Senigallia band. Gianluca Marconi left to get married, and the line-up settled into a four-piece alongside Giovanni Rovatti on guitar and vocals and Corrado Di Noto on drums.

The musical direction shifted sharply. The power/thrash of the Hydra years gave way to technical thrash and death, along the lines of Death, Atheist, Cynic and Sepultura. It was a break with the past, and the band wanted that break marked in the name as well. Hydra became AydrA: a similar creature, a new head.

The new logo was drawn by Mauro himself, the first of many versions he would shape over the following three decades. The logo changes shape as the sound changes: one version for Demo 4 in 1993, another for Penance Stare in 1994. In the rehearsal room and out on the street, the 1992 photographs show a quartet introducing itself for the first time under a name that would still be standing forty years after the story began.