Avantgarde Music is without a doubt one of the most influential underground labels of the last 15 years and only a short look into their back catalogue – with cult releases of bands like BEHEMOTH and MAYHEM – is proving this fact. During the last couple of years the Italian label released only a handful of albums and I’m definitely not the only one who was not sure if the “patient” was still alive, But sometimes quality is far more important than quantity – a fact which find it’s perfect prove in the SUN OF THE BLIND debut. The band from Switzerland – consisting of the DARKSPACE guitarist Zhaaral – is presenting on “Skullreader” a very dark and intensive mélange of Black Metal fused with ambient music. This normally sounds not too interesting but all five songs offer such a hypnotic atmosphere that you automatically want to turn out all lights. The music is based on this atmosphere mainly created by guitars and synths with reduced vocals. Main artist Zhaaral described his debut as a traumatic voyage and sometimes you can nearly feel his pain and despair. A great debut which shows next to the fact that Avantgarde has not lost their connection to real underground (art) that Black Metal vs. Ambient means more than just boring keyboard music with croaky screams out of the northern woods of Australia. www.transientenigma.com, www.avantgardemusic.com