Bandcamp The Flammarion woodcut on the cover, a figure poking their head through the edge of the sky into the machinery beyond, is a fair map of what Wormholy World is after. The Helsinki band, risen from the ashes of The Paladin, file themselves under heavy psych and space rock, but the record that plays is something more crushing and more patient: six long tracks of cavernous atmospheric post-metal, closer to post-black and doom than to desert fuzz, built on the tidal swing between near-silent hush and vast, saturated wall.
The great strength here is dynamics, and it runs through every track. The master is left genuinely open, uncrushed, so the album can drop to almost nothing and then flood in without the loudness-war flattening the impact. “The Dreaming” is the clearest proof, an almost-silent atmospheric intro holding for nearly three minutes before the eruption lands with real physical weight, whispered spoken word up close giving way to screams buried in the storm. “Panther Eyes” works the same extreme contrast between minimalist melancholy and eruptive bombast, and “Newborn Sun” closes the record on long, hypnotic transitions and clean channel separation that let the shoegaze textures shimmer. This is a band that trusts the quiet completely, and it pays off in cinematic scale.
It is not quite flawless in the mix. When Mount Palatine go to full density the midrange stacks up, the low mids and a subby, under-defined bass swallowing some of the guitar detail while the reverb-drenched cymbals wash a little harsh in the upper range. The harsh vocals sit so deep in the reverb that they read as texture rather than message. These are the costs of chasing this much space and mass at once, and they only ever nibble at the edges of what is otherwise a beautifully staged record.
Wormholy World is an immersive, ambitious, genuinely dynamic piece of atmospheric post-metal that uses its fifty-three minutes to build worlds rather than just fill time. The quiet-loud dramaturgy is handled with a confidence a lot of heavier bands never find, and the cosmic melancholy it conjures lingers well after the last drone fades. A cleaner hand on the densest peaks and this would be a genre standout; as it stands it is a very good one, and well worth getting lost in.
Cavernous, cinematic atmospheric post-metal with post-black, doom and shoegaze textures (self-described as heavy psych/space, but it plays heavier and more patient than that), across six long tracks built on the swing between near-silent hush and vast saturated walls. The defining strength is dynamics: the master is left genuinely open and uncrushed, so the album can drop to almost nothing and flood back in with full impact (“The Dreaming” holds near-silence for minutes before erupting, “Panther Eyes” and “Newborn Sun” work the same extreme contrast with clean channel separation). The recurring weakness is density: at full tilt the midrange stacks up, a subby under-defined bass and low mids swallow guitar detail, the reverb-drenched cymbals wash harsh, and the harsh vocals sit so deep they read as texture. Immersive, ambitious and genuinely dynamic, undercut only at its heaviest peaks.
Standout tracks: The Dreaming, Panther Eyes, Newborn Sun
