40 Years of Chaos · EP.19 — Reviews, Nicola Leaves, The Break-Up

Between Icon of Sin in 1999 and Hyperlogical Non-Sense in 2004 the Italian metal press transformed completely. The historic print magazines closed, cut their frequency or migrated online, and the audience moved with them. AydrA, buried for years in the writing of HNS, crossed that passage without noticing. When the record came out the reviews arrived from an editorial landscape that hadn't existed before: Metalitalia, Metal.it, Heavy-Metal.it, Truemetal, Metallized, Metallus, Metalkimia. Distorted Magazine was one of the last Italian print outlets to review it.

Then, with the album barely out and only two concerts played, something broke. Nicola Raffaeli — drummer since 1995, on the demos, on Psycho Pain Control, on Icon of Sin, through the whole quintet tour — was going through a complicated personal phase and announced he was leaving. It was a heavy fracture: ten years of rhythmic identity walking out.

The search for a replacement was long, and for the first time since 1991 AydrA truly stopped: a year with no concerts and no new material. Then came Davide Fabi, a drummer from Urbino with the technical preparation the HNS repertoire demanded. The band played again through 2006 and 2007, but the dates grew sparse and the promotional machine wound down. Something was ending.