The story of PSILOCYBE LARVAE started in 1996, in the Russian city of Vyborg, when Vitaly "Larv" Belobritsky (voc/git), Denis Vinogradov (git), Oleg Peshkichev (bass), and Eugene Ushakov (drums) formed the band to indulge their passion for melodic and haunting death/dark metal.

After recording a first demo, "Liar", in the very same year, the band soon entered a professional studio to record a song for the "Russian Alternative Extreme Music" sampler. Drum parts for that song were provided by Ilya "Alan" Piyaev (AZEROTH, PAINFUL MEMORIES), as Eugene decided to leave the band just before recording. The compilation including PSYLOCYBE LARVAE’s "Death Is Not the End" was released in 1998.

Following a short interlude with METALLIZATION’s Eugene Golubkov, PSILOCYBE LARVAE finally found a permanent drummer in 1999, when Alan took over drum duties. The new line-up entered the studio again in mid-2000 to record their first full-length "Stigmata". This self-released effort garnered some favourable feedback, including the "demo of the month" award in Germany's Legacy magazine, so Black Side Productions decided to re-release "Stigmata" on CD in 2001.

Meanwhile, the band underwent further line-up changes, with Andrey replacing Denis on guitars and Den joining the band as keyboardist. 2002 saw PSILOCYBE LARVAE contributing two cover songs to MANOWAR and CHIMERA tributes, but more importantly they finally finished recording their second album. "Agony" was released by Black Side Productions in the beginning of 2003.

The following months dealt another blow to the line-up, as Oleg's addictions started to get out of hand. In December 2004, therefore, the band decided to part ways with him, leaving PSILOCYBE LARVAE without a bass player for quite some time.

A silver lining appeared in 2005, when Russia's major label CD-Maximum agreed to remaster and re-release the two albums with bonus tracks. The band also found a new bass player in Alex "Liga" Legotin, but unfortunately there was new trouble ahead: after a few months Alex had to leave the group, keyboardist Den was fired as well, and in autumn 2005 the band was eventually forced to relocate to St. Petersburg - with no stable line-up and lost in what looked like a semi-hiatus, things were slowly falling apart.

What could have been the final nail in the coffin, however, surprisingly heralded a new dawn for PSILOCYBE LARVAE: in St. Petersburg,  Alex re-joined the ranks and keyboardist Dmitry "Chaos" Orekhov completed the line-up to release the band from its forced inactivity.
After headlining the Ukrainian "Triple Interaction" tour in autumn 2006, the band entered DDT Records in January 2007 to record their third album, "Non-existence". The effort was mixed at Studio Hertz (Poland), mastered at Cutting Room (Sweden), and finally released in February 2008 by PSILOCYBE LARVAE’s new label Mazzar Records. In March the band headlined a Russian "Non-existent" tour to support the new album.

During 2008 the band continued to promote "Non-existence" by doing shows in Russia and taking part in a Belarus tour named "Creative Breath of Death" together with Katalepsy, Deathbringer and Thelema.

In 2009, PSILOCYBE LARVAE signed to Dark Harvest Records for an international release of "Non-existence" and started songwriting for future releases.

After two years of intensive work Russian metallers returned with a brand new album called “The Labyrinth Of Penumbra” and are extremely proud to present their creation to the world - a new chapter of the story is just about to begin...


Vitaly Belobritsky