About Us

The story of Avantgarde Music

Avantgarde Music was started in the old days of 1994 as an obvious continuation of the underground label Obscure Plasma Records.

The most important releases were the mass-praised "Live in Leipzig" by Mayhem, Thergothon "Stream from the Heavens", Ophthalamia "A Journey in Darkness", Katatonia's "For Funerals to Come" mini album, Unholy and the debut release of Carpathian Forest "Through Chasm, Caves and Titan Woods". These records, among others, were released in 1994 and 1995.

In 1996 Avantgarde Music expanded its structure with more people involved in the company (overtaking also the release program of Wounded Love Records): the opening of a records store in Milan (Sound Cave) was the key-step in that year.

Since that moment until today the two joined labels have been working with bands like Behemoth, Taake, Shining, Opera IX, Dark Sanctuary and many others, having quite longlasting relationships with some of them (Behemoth, Carpathian Forest, Katatonia just to name the most famous ones).

Some of those bands are obviously gone, new ones are in. That basically was, more or less consciously, the dark "mission" of the label: to launch unknown talents. In the very last years though the label is more focused to sign also some yet known bands with a few records already in their rank. Thus came the signing of people like Astarte, Nehemah, Forgotten Tomb, Nortt, Azaghal etc

However there is not a real signing policy in the label. In most cases we try to work with bands that we absolutely like, although some exceptions (mistakes) have been made in the past. Great albums and bad albums have been released so far. We don't have the arrogance to claim that everything we did is state-of-the-art.

At least Avantgarde Music always was, and more than ever is today, very careful and conservative in releasing records: we are strongly against those labels overflooding the market by releasing records every month, so we don't ! And we stay off that mad policy.

Last but not least, a key-step in the Company's history was the launch of our twin website www.sound-cave.com that is mailorder website where anybody all around the world can buy our records, among thousands other, thanks to nowdays internet's facilities with payment (credit cards, paypal) and order processing.