Arida Vortex previously known as Vortex was formed in 1997 by two metal brothers-guitarists Roman Guryev and Ivan Guryev in Moscow. At that moment, the music style this band was fond of could be characterized as strict power-speed metal with no keyboards at all.

The complete band staff at April 1998 was the following : Roman and Ivan as guitarists, Oleg Bondarenko at drums and Eugene Tikhonov took the bass and vocals. The band started its live shows and simultaneously were concerned by finding a separate lead vocalist. At the meantime the bass guitarist and drummer changed and Denis Popov took the bass and Anton Smolyanin took the drums.

At December 1999, Andrey 'AndyVortex' Lobashev joined the band and, in 2000, the short demo was recorded aimed to be put in the Internet to promote Vortex among Internet metal headbangers.

Until the end of 2002, the band kept playing under the name Vortex but then it was decided to change name to more unique and at the same time keeping the hurricane force of Vortex. The first name Arida was suggested by a band's friend who studied ancient history and found a name of mythological wind goddess appropriate to be used in the band's name. After brief debates the band name Arida Vortex was approved.

So the debute album Evil Sorcery (2003, CD-Maximum) was recorded under new name and it was recognized by metal audience as one of the most interesting power metal releases of 2003 in Russia and, since that time, Arida Vortex became a synonym of uncompromising powermetal force on the Russian metal stage. A good number of live gigs made the band popular among metal fans.

At the late of 2003, the bass guitarist Denis Popov and the secong guitarist Ivan Guryev have abandoned the band and their places were occupied by Nikolai Kuzmenko and Andrey Sedletsky respectively. The renewed band started to prepare its next album material and played a lot of gigs in the same time. The most unusual and funny gig in this period was a festival near ("at the stairs of") the Russian government White House were Arida Vortex took part as a headline band.

The recording of the second album was prolonged until 2005 when Mikhail Nemirovsky joined the band as new bass guitarist and at last the album Flames of Sunset saw the light at spring of 2006 (CD-Maximum). Since that moment, the band started the work on the third album and a new drummer Alexander Vlasov joined the band.

In July 2008, Arida Vortex performed at the final day of one of the most famous Russian open-air festivals "Nashestvie-2008" closing one more live-shows season with powerful and dynamic gig. For the current time, Arida Vortex has started to record tracks for the new album and is not signed to any recording label.

Source : http://www.myspace.com/aridavortex