Helsinki’s Mount Palatine are ready to expand the boundaries of Heavy Psych Metal with their forthcoming album “Wormholy World,” set for release on February 06, 2026 via Octopus Rising / Argonauta Records. Emerging from the intense chemistry of three long-time collaborators, the trio—Jean the Baron on guitar and vocals, Count Boogie on bass, and Lord of the Groove on drums—have forged a sound that merges crushing riffs, hypnotic Psychedelia, and dynamic vocal contrasts into immersive sonic journeys.
Following their 2024 debut “Cockroach Crusade,” Mount Palatine have evolved their creative vision, crafting a record that explores cosmic and spiritual dimensions while maintaining the raw energy and spontaneity born from years of jamming together. With tracks that range from Heavy, Sludge-infused grooves to ethereal, transcendental passages, “Wormholy World” promises listeners a voyage through destruction and recreation, chaos and harmony, where every riff and rhythm pulses with purpose. Their new single “Newborn Sun” already hints at the album’s hypnotic scope, offering a glimpse into a world where improvisation, instinct, and cosmic resonance converge.
Can you tell us about the formation of Mount Palatine and how the three of you came together as a band? What were your first musical interactions like?
Our first band practice together goes back a little over ten years, when we were playing progressive death metal as a group, although that project never ended up on an album or on stage. Count and Lord, meanwhile, had already played together before reaching adulthood, in a heavy metal band called Serethe, which eventually came to an end due to studies and military service. Mount Palatine in its current form was brought to life during the COVID era, after a few conversations between Lord and Count, which led to reaching out to Baron, helped along by a few beers, of course. The musical direction was different this time, but getting back to making music together felt easy and natural.
Before Mount Palatine, you operated under the name The Paladin. What prompted the name change, and how does Mount Palatine reflect your artistic vision today?
We simply wanted to define our identity more clearly and stand out, since there were already names identical or very close to ours, and even more appeared after we started. The timing also felt right. Our second album was coming out in collaboration with Argonauta, and our vision had become clearer in the process. We feel the name change was very successful, because it maintained a connection to the old name while at the same time offering a more majestic framework for creating and presenting psychedelic music.
Your debut album “Cockroach Crusade” set the foundation for your sound. How does “Wormholy World” build on or diverge from that first record?
The biggest differences are probably that our vision has become more coherent, although at the same time it has to be said that we still didn’t want to impose any strict mold on what we do. There are still elements drawn from a wide range of influences. Another audible difference is that the production process for the first album inevitably taught us a lot, and while making this record we already knew much earlier on what kinds of elements we wanted to add to the songs to support the core sound and the overall vision.
“Newborn Sun” has been described as a song that “appeared almost naturally” during a jam session. Could you walk us through the creative process behind that track?
The creative process for the main tracks and idea of the song was very simple – we just jammed! We had already planned the songs for the album, Panther Eyes being the last track to be included at that point, but this came so effortlessly so after our 10+ minute jam was over we thought that “well, guess we have one more song here”. The core structure was more or less there from the get-go. Afterwards vocal lines, synths and leads were rather easy to arrange to bring more nuances and flavour to the otherwise hypnotic and beating groove of the song.
Improvisation and instinct seem central to your songwriting. How do you balance structured composition with spontaneous jamming when creating new material?
Actual thoughtful composing is mostly piecing together different jam-parts or creating a section to suit the needs of a song, for example “we need a chorus for this song idea”, but even those are usually winged on the fly very jamfully. Composing guitar solos are usually given a bit more effort to keep them interesting during the relatively long solo spots.
Psychedelic atmospheres, crushing riffs, and shifts between ethereal vocals and harsh growls are all key elements of your sound. How do you approach blending these dynamics to maintain coherence across a song or an album?
A lot of the dynamics find their places naturally without too much planning. The base instrumental template is created through piecing together ideas from our jams, and most of the time vocal ideas follow very soon, though not always. In that case we usually discuss and try out ideas.
Lyrically, “Wormholy World” explores cosmic and spiritual themes. Can you share more about your inspiration for the lyrics and how personal experiences influence them?
We tend to allow everyone in the band to have their lyrical outlet with our songs, so inspirations stem from a multitude of places. This time Jean wrote The Sands, Whispers of the Holy World and Panther Eyes, Count wrote Newborn Sun and Ethereal, and Lord wrote The Dreaming. In other words, the lyrical input is shared quite broadly, which naturally brings different personal perspectives into the album. As for the inspiration itself, it naturally came from the processes of life, the passing of loved ones, the arrival of children, and the general approach toward that midpoint in life, the world and society, human relations, existence, different cultures and thinking, cosmos itself…Of course, within our concept we tend to handle these themes on a slightly larger, more universal scale rather than in a deeply personal way, even though there certainly wouldn’t be anything wrong with that either. Sometimes it only takes a spark of inspiration and visions start to bloom. And dream logic is a reliable bridge builder in that world.
Each track seems to carry its own identity and atmosphere. Could you give us some insight into how you approach arranging and layering guitars, synths, effects, and vocals?
Sometimes it feels almost self-evident what the song wants and then it’s a matter of finding the right instruments and effects to carry out an idea. Synth instruments were usually mixed from multiple different instruments so creating correct sounds first is a good start and then you can really start just having fun. Angrier vocals were most of the time just a single track, with some added doubling to accentuate certain spots. For atmospheric parts clean vocals were either layered or combined with spoken vocals. Backing clean vocals were also used to create an eerie or mystical atmosphere and with The Sands for example they were a lot of fun to do and felt very natural. Guitar rhythm tracks were often doubled, and occasionally acoustic guitars bring some organic feeling to the songs too. Lead guitars on top of the rhythm guitars were also used every now and then, often breaking a little from the underlying groove of the section. In total there were quite a few tracks for all the songs so at times we also had to take a step back and get rid or tone down some of the ideas with synths for instance.
Your music draws from Doom, Stoner, Sludge, Progressive Metal, and Psychedelic Rock. How do you select which influences to highlight in each song while keeping a distinct Mount Palatine sound?
Good question, but we don’t really make conscious choices, at least not during the actual creative phase. We know our vision and the worlds we want to operate in, and that naturally frames what comes out of the jams. After that, of course, there’s some selection involved when we evaluate whether the songs that emerged are aligned with the direction we’re heading in. Our distinctive sound comes largely from the fact that, even though our vision is unified, the musical backgrounds and sources of inspiration among the members are quite diverse.
Recording at Saarni Music seems to have been a central part of this album. How did the environment of your home studio shape the final recordings?
Saarni Music’s studio is essentially a professional recording studio, where we also had our rehearsal place. So after finishing the simultaneously recorded main tracks we could continue the post-production phase of overdubs, multitracking, percussions and synths at our own pace which decreased the stress and gave us time to think through how we want certain things to sound. We had the opportunity to hold separate backing percussion sessions and try different sound effects and mixing ideas for a longer period of time than just cramming everything together within a few days in the studio. We might for example jam a little and record some guitars or discuss where we’d want some synths. Some other day we could do vocals or just make notes of initial mixing ideas while listening to the raw versions. Jean also did some work at his own home studio, like backing vocals and synths and submixes, a share of leads and so forth. Then at Saarni those tracks and submixes were checked out and added to the projects. It felt easy and familiar to work like this at Saarni Studios and with Mactus after we had done the debut album in a similar manner.
Mactus the Magemaster is credited with the final touches. How important was the mixing and mastering process in translating your live energy into the studio recordings?
It’s always pretty important, but we definitely have to tip our hats to Mactus for the work he did in a few key moments. When we were creating the intro for one of the tracks, the number of layers kept growing to the point where it became hard to tell whether the end result was heading where we wanted it to. In the end, we just had to leave the whole brew in his hands and try to put into words what we hoped to eventually hear. Mactus is a real wizard with the sound, so he pulled it off, and on top of that came up with a brilliant mixing idea that strengthened the concept even further. With another song, we were unsure how to get the chorus to groove at full power with the rest of the track, but we stressed about it for nothing, it turned out to be no problem at all for Mactus. These are just a couple of examples, but he really helped us reach a successful result in many parts of the album.
What role does groove play in your music, especially in tracks where extended jams and hypnotic rhythms dominate?
In short: it plays a major and central role. And that’s also where the challenge lies, how do you best capture the natural groove that comes from jamming onto a record? For this album, we approached it differently than on the first one, where we recorded all the instruments separately. This time we tracked the foundations, drums, bass, and the main guitar, simultaneously to carry as much of that organic groove and feel onto the album as possible. We were very happy with this approach, and it’s quite likely we’ll continue with the same method on the next record as well.
Live performance is such a crucial aspect of Heavy Psych Metal. How do you plan to translate the cosmic and hypnotic elements of “Wormholy World” to a live setting?
For now it’s been mainly our stage presence and performance, with added help from lighting folks on different venues. We’re also looking into bringing in some video visuals to the live experience later too. The challenge to capture the right groove on tape as mentioned above, is different on stage. There’s less boundaries for the musical expression in live playing, which can be a risk but is also a possibility to deliver the organic jam-like groove in just the right way, topped off with stage presence that encompasses that groove by bodily motions.
The current metal scene has seen a resurgence of Heavy Psych and Stoner sounds. How do you see Mount Palatine positioning itself within today’s Finnish and international scene?
There’s a ton of great bands out there and fortunately it feels like our concoctions have their very own unique flavour, so we should stand out enough. We’re gigging with the bands falling vaguely under the same umbrella of genres and hopefully gaining new audiences that way. Being a little harder to slot into some specific genre gives us more freedom and flexibility too.
Looking at the future, are there particular concepts or themes you hope to explore in upcoming releases beyond “Wormholy World”?
We haven’t thought of themes or concepts yet that much. Most probably we’ll continue on the more psychedelic path for now at least as it seems to tick with our personalities and maybe provides a lot of free playground to be roamed.
Fans of Elder, Stoned Jesus, Mastodon, and Down are likely to find familiar elements in your music. How do you maintain originality while engaging with the broader Heavy Psych and Progressive Metal communities?
We don’t necessarily have a set priority to maintain originality. That being said neither do we seek outside inspirations in the sense that we’d consciously try to create something similar in the vein of e.g. the said bands. Our inspirations are vast and varied so we just try to find and follow a shared objective or vision, and for now we’ve at least in our subjective view achieved originality as an extra by-product, which is nice obviously.
Finally, what do you hope listeners take away from “Wormholy World,” both musically and emotionally?
Hopefully the listeners enjoy the ride and even find some inspiration to do cool things themselves too! And mind the Frog!
With “Wormholy World,” Mount Palatine invite listeners on a journey through destruction and recreation, chaos and harmony, the visceral and the infinite. Their combination of hypnotic psychedelia, crushing heaviness, and spiritual depth establishes them as one of the most compelling forces in contemporary Heavy Psych Metal. As the album approaches its February release, fans can expect a fully immersive experience where every riff, rhythm, and vocal passage resonates with cosmic intensity.
Pre-Order “Wormholy World” on Bandcamp: https://mountpalatine.bandcamp.com/album/wormholy-world