40 Years of Chaos · EP.17 — MEI Faenza and Frank Andiver

In 2002 AydrA welcomed a new second guitar. After auditions that went nowhere, they met Alessandro Marcelli — a young local guitarist, very skilled but still raw for the band's technical level. He accepted Francesco as a mentor, matured visibly in a year, and joined the line-up. He wasn't the one writing the first riffs, but he was a top-level arranger and soloist, dialoguing with Francesco in the two-guitar passages. New influences entered the sound: Meshuggah, Gorguts, irregular meter, constructed dissonance.

That same year AydrA were booked at the MEI in Faenza, the Meeting of Independent Labels. The posters were already up when Francesco had to leave for Greece, and the show was cancelled. The band went anyway. They stopped at the Rising Works / Xtreme Rising booth and left a four-song promo — the first material from what would become Hyperlogical Non-Sense.

Frank Andiver wasn't at the booth: he had gone to hear AydrA live, having seen them on the bill. He came back, found the tape, and — already a fan of Icon of Sin — offered directly to produce the new album. The deal was closed in a few days. Drummer of Labyrinth, born in Lucca in 1970, Andiver had been running Zenith Studios since 1990. AydrA were going to Lucca.