On the day we honour all who died during WW II in Holland, I write this review. It suits perfectly on this sad day. Psilocybe Larvae hails from Russia and play a rather depressive style of death/doom metal. They were formed back in 1996 and you can hear their experience on this album. Opener "Castaway" is for Psilocybe standards, a fast song. This song already gives away part of their influences; the band Paradise Lost is at least one of them. With the next song "Sleepwalkers", resemblances with acts like Anathema, My Dying Bride and even Opeth come to the surface.
In this song the first clean singing is used and though it isn't completely bad, it surely needs improvement. Fortunately they don't use the clean vocals a lot. "Let the Flame" opens serene with whispering grunts, after which it gets very fast at black-metal speed. A nice keyboard part gives the song the variety it needs. The thing that makes this band different from the once I already mentioned, is the fact that they use more death metal parts. The doom and death parts have a 50/50 ratio.
This is not a record you want to listen to when you are already depressed. Take for example the song "Cold Desert of Eternity". The title alone says it all. A song in My Dying Bride/Anathema style that suck out the last little bit of hope you had. If you have survived this song, you can be enlightened a bit with the little faster and less depressive track "Non-Existent World", but behold, halfway through the sadness strikes you again.
I understand why Dark Harvest Records has given this band the opportunity to release this record world-wide. It has the same high level as all the good Western death/doom - stuff. Of course you can say that they are not original all the time, but at least they use the big UK-doom/death bands as influences. In general you can also say that they are faster by using more death metal parts. There is only one thing I would do if I was in the band, change the band name. With a name I can hardly write, let alone remember, it will not be easy to conquer the Western world.
A sad, very sad album and for a band like this it is a positive fact.
