King Kraken Part Two. The excitement is building around the upcoming release of the new King Kraken album, March Of The Gods. An album stuffed full of heavy riffs, there is an expectation at MetalTalk that this may well propel the South Wales band to the next level in 2025. We are two weeks away from the album launch show at Hangar 18 in Swansea, but the last date on the current tour poster stands out: Stonedead.
Talking with drummer Richard Lee Mears, bassist Karl Meyer and vocalist Mark O’Donoghue, we head back to August 2024 and that Bloodstock performance. The band explain how their invitation came about. “It was phenomenal. We were sitting there twiddling our thumbs, and Ceri gave us a call. That is how it happened.
“I believe we sent an e-mail some months before asking if we could be considered, and we assumed it just went in the pile with thousands of other bands. All of a sudden, we literally just got the call, and it was like fucking hell.”
Now, I was aware that Simon Hall knew the band. I had a conversation with him in 2023 about getting the band on the New Blood stage, and he told me that he knew the band but that he was full. Clearly, his ability to retain huge amounts of information about a band and think they might be quite good for Bloodstock is quite impressive. But to be invited is special. And, of course, King Kraken had a huge reception and have also been invited to play the Winter Gathering event at KK’s Steel Mill in December.
Rich provides a bit more detail. “We’ve stayed in contact with Simon. He came down to Metal 2 The Masses in London, which we headlined last year. We had a real good conversation with him but didn’t even talk about our band. Really. It was just about music in general. Ceri has been getting on with him well for a while. I think Ceri’s worked really hard there, to be fair.
“I think he just got a call when he was in The Grumpy Clown [his home-built bar]. Obviously, it’s a Bloodstock event. We knew it was going to be massive. But one thing I didn’t expect was the whole press storm that came with it. Our name in Kerrang! and stuff like that. Everyone was talking about it.
“All we could think about was, how on earth are we being considered for this gig? It didn’t hit home for a while.”
Mark was Gobsmacked “just to have been asked. But the whole media thing where you couldn’t look on Facebook without the news popping up two, three, four, five, six times. This is nuts. This is literally everywhere. This is as close to viral as we’ve been.”
King Kraken Set For Stonedead 2025
Of course, the other big announcement was the confirmation that the band will be opening this year’s Stonedead Festival in front of 5000 people in August. Was the Bloodstock Winter Gathering announcement bigger than that? “No, I don’t think it was,” says Karl.
“I think for me, and for Mark as well, Stonedead feels very, very personal,” Rich says, “because we’ve been there. We’ve worked hard together. We’ve been to the festivals. Last year, we did a signing event, which was successful. You know, you were there, Paul.
“It was absolutely phenomenal, to be honest. Recently, we met with Chris and Neil, and Neil said to me ultimately, this is because you’ve interacted with the whole team. Not just Neil or Chris. Everyone. For me, Stonedead was the start of things going up, I think, because it had always been the plan. Especially after Bloodstock and recording the album. The next biggest thing we needed to achieve was getting that gig. That show is what everything up to March Of The Gods leads to. That first building block, and then we’ll build upon that.”
It is a stunning achievement to get that slot, beating 100 other peers to get there. August can’t come quickly enough. I mention that in a recent interview with Henrik Steenholdt from Empyre, he referred to their aim of becoming an arena band, not as headliners but by getting a support slot on an arena package for the exposure to push onto the next level. How do the band focus on their actual ambitions and plan for King Kraken going forward?
“We were laser-focused on getting that slot at Stonedead. We’ve got it. So then now we all collate together. Now what? What are we aiming for now? What do we focus on? Where do we go to climb that ladder? We will be at the point where we want that support slot for the arena tour. Are we going to get it? We want to start playing them.
“I don’t think you can rest on your laurels, and as amazing as it is, we have to keep aiming for something, achieve it and then keep going. You keep spreading, you keep putting the word out, and you keep getting your music out, and you keep writing. You just keep going.”
Karl takes up the narrative. “Targets might seem unachievable, but then they’re not that high if you know what I mean. I mean, Stonedead was a massive achievement, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like we were trying to get main stage at Glastonbury or anything like that. Like we’ve said before, about levels and rungs of the ladder. And as Rich said, that was the next rung that we needed to grasp on to. And yeah, we achieved it.”
Mark continues. “I think the interesting thing is about Stonedead is the work for that started about three years ago. You’re talking 2022. Last year, we started to realise that was a rung on the ladder that we could get to. We’ve been invited for the last two years running, and you know to to get the slot now is still amazing.”
Rich says he “cried like a baby” when he got the news. “It means so much to me. I need that to get to where I am. The band want to push on. I think where I was surprised with Winter Gathering was that was just offered to us. Yes, the work was done at Bloodstock in 2024, but it did come out of nowhere.”
With such huge news, has the band experienced any negativity towards them? It’s a scene that is generally supportive, but there are tensions and jealousy, even if it’s the fans rather than other bands. King Kraken explain that there were a few comments on social media about how they didn’t deserve it, but they are sanguine about it, acknowledging that everyone has their favourites and that some fans will naturally be upset.
“There were a few comments,” says Rich. “But ultimately, we got it, and that is all that we can say. There were comments that we thought were negative, but when we really looked at it, it wasn’t. One comment said, ‘Thanks to these guys, I’m considering going to a ticket reseller because I bought a ticket in the hope that King Kraken would have got to last year’s one, but they didn’t. So, I sold my ticket and now they’ve got this year’s. It’s going to cost me an arm and a leg, but I’m going to see them.’
That, to me, overshadows any negativity.” Mark says. “I think it’s how much you choose to read the comments and take them as negatives as well. At the end of the day, I think we are very focused on where we want to go. It doesn’t really matter to value anybody else’s opinion.”
Whilst this may sound arrogant, I can tell you that these boys are as humble as they come. Formed back in 2017/18, the pandemic put a major spanner in their progress, and since then, their drive has been steely focused.
Hard-working, hard gigging and with a constant desire to spread their music across the UK, they are determined to push on. “I think we would be quite arrogant to sit there and think that we would be everybody’s cup of tea,” says Karl. “We know we aren’t. We know we appeal to only a certain sort of audience, and that’s fine. That’s the beauty of diversity in music, and that’s why there are Thrash Metal bands and soft rock bands.”
Whilst the Stonedead set offers great opportunities, there are several bands who have played there and similar festivals that have not been able to progress further. Do they see any risks with the show? “I think that reminds me of every band we’ve seen win Metal 2 The Masses going to play Bloodstock. You don’t hear from them again. I think it’s more about the effort you put into it.
“What we are planning for Stonedead is big. We haven’t got time to think about the risks because if you don’t take risks, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
“There is risk,” Mark says. “Maybe we won’t go down well, but as long as we all give 150% and we are the best version of King Kraken we could possibly be on that day with our show, then I’ll be 100% happy because it’s 5,000 people.”
Rich agrees. “If there’s one person who hasn’t seen us goes ‘fuck! They were really good,’ then we’ve done our job. The only risk is that we don’t do ourselves justice. The pressure of this gig is that it has to be the best we’ve ever played. It has to be the biggest version of King Kraken that we’ve thought of to this date. It has to be. It’s the biggest show that we’ve ever played. 5,000 people. It’s the biggest stage, so we have to fill that stage.”
Karls says there is a lot of pressure to get things right. “But ultimately, we wouldn’t have done any of this if we didn’t think it was achievable. We wouldn’t continue to do this and push on if we didn’t think we were meant to be in that slot.”
Filling the stage at Stonedead is a challenge, and we laugh as Mark tells us his goal is to “get Adam to move off his two square foot of land.” As we laugh, he adds, “If he doesn’t move, he’s going to look really small on that stage. It’s a massive stage. Just walk about a little bit, enjoy it.”
As we chuckled and schemed to move his pedalboards around the stage, the band told me they had plenty of surprises in the planning stage. This is a band who practise every week, regardless of live shows or not.
It’s going to be an epic day with a band who are determined to make every second count. “We’ve got loads of stuff that probably isn’t realistic,” laughs Mark. “But you know, I think that unrealistic is a good place to start to find realistic.”
If Rich has his way, that 40-minute set will have tentacles all over the stage and beyond, with an army of Trojan warriors marching across the stage and all sorts.”
Part One of the King Kraken Interview can be read here. King Kraken will self-release March Of The God on 18 April 2025. The album can be pre-saved from here and pre-ordered from here.
The 2024 Stonedead lineup showcased a diverse array of talent, including emerging bands like Tailgunner and established acts such as Ugly Kid Joe and Eclipse in what was a dynamic and memorable festival, reinforcing Stonedead’s status as a premier event for rock and Metal enthusiasts.
You can read all MetalTalk’s Stondead 2024 coverage here.
In 2025, Stondead will continue to enhance its reputation for curating events “for rock fans, by rock fans.” Although tickets are sold out, fans can join the waiting list via the official Stonedead Festival website.
For updates, follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
