Hi there! How are you doing these days?
Doing good! A big wait is finally behind us now that the album was released at the beginning of February. Overall, things are quite active at the moment. There’s still one show left this spring, but we’ve already started booking the next ones as well. At the same time, our fingers are itching to start preparing material for the next album.
How would you classify MOUNT PALATINE’s music? Do you agree with the reviewers who are trying to describe your musical genre?
That’s a tough one! We’re not claiming to be any kind of unicorns, but still for us, pinning down an exact genre has proven quite difficult. In the bigger picture, references to doom, heavy psychedelic metal, prog, and also stoner metal probably hit somewhere close to the mark, yet at the same time, it’s hard to clearly settle into any one of those categories. What’s interesting is that reviewers have brought up several comparison bands that aren’t actually part of our active listening rotation. That’s not ‘wrong’ in any way, of course, if anything, it’s just fascinating and maybe speaks to the universality of music.
Who are your top five musical influences?
Honestly, we’d probably need a top 15 to really cover everyone’s influences, since we all come from such different musical backgrounds. But here’s a quick five, in no particular order, that kind of connect us as players: Black Sabbath, The Doors, Opeth, Elder, and Down.
What do you want fans to take away from your music? Is it just a mood, or do you hope to communicate specific ideas?
In principle, of course, anything that resonates or stirs some kind of emotion is meaningful to us. Still, some of our favorite feedback has been comments from listeners along the lines of ‘this music makes your brain slosh around,’ ‘I found myself zoning out to that,’ or ‘it’s pretty hypnotic stuff.’ Comments like those tell us that at least some of what we’re aiming for has come across.
Can you tell us about Wormholy World?
Wormholy World is an album that slowly guides the listener through different feelings and experiences of humanity, letting everything gradually grow from small to large and back from large to small again. It is our first statement built strongly on songs that emerged from jam sessions, later arranged together. Some tracks are more fully arranged, while others remain closer to their original jam form. The album isn’t exactly easy, it demands something from the listener, but it is also ready to give back, if you take the time to immerse yourself. As one review put it, it doesn’t require a quiet, dark room; it mainly asks for attention and the right mindset.
What do you love and hate about the music business?
Love and hate are strong words, but maybe as a ‘young-old’ guy you start to miss, at least to some extent, the time when music wasn’t available for free or almost free. You had to go out and buy the record, and once you put it on the turntable, you focused on it in a completely different way, both personally and more broadly speaking. At the same time, of course, the digital world offers entirely different possibilities, like someone on a distant continent being able to hear what we create.
What is the best concert you have ever been to? What do you enjoy most about playing live?
I assume this refers to the shows we’ve played ourselves? Hopefully the best one is still ahead of us, but so far we’d probably say Semifinal in Helsinki. It’s a venue where we’ve seen some great gigs ourselves, our own set went really well, and the other bands that night were excellent too. The best thing about playing live is reaching that state of mind where you almost forget you’re actively performing and just enjoy rocking out.
How have you evolved as an artist or band over the past year?
It’s hard to answer this with anything but yes, and maybe in our case there are some solid reasons for that. We found a great partner in Argonauta Records to release the album and got it out into the world. Over the past year, we’ve played more shows than during the entire existence of the band before that. We changed our name to something that feels more like our own, and so on. At the same time, as we start working on the next album, it feels like we already know a bit more about how to do it, in many ways.
If you could meet, play a gig, co-write a song, have dinner, or get drunk with any band or artist (dead or alive), who would it be?
I have a feeling this could turn into a fight unless we had three dinners or drinking nights in a row to sort it out, our preferences might differ that much. Still, speaking on behalf of the bassist, I think I can safely say the others wouldn’t object if we could breathe life back into Jim Morrison and get the chance to do the whole set you mentioned.
What's next for you?
More shows with new bands, and hopefully pushing the next album forward as soon as possible!
https://linktr.ee/mountpalatine
