Interview: King Kraken (All members)
Sep 20
18 min read
Interview: 20th September 2026
During the weekend of the release of their latest single, Shadows Fall (review here), Hotel Hobbies spent some time in the company of all four members of King Kraken. We talked about their newest music, their love of playing live and of touring with bands such as Crobot.
Hotel Hobbies: Well, first of all, it's good to see you guys again. I interviewed Rich and Mark last year, just before the release of March of the Gods. I have also spoken to you at couple of your gigs since that time. How has the last year been for King Kraken?
Mark Donoghue: Absolutely insane, actually. Well, insane since Steelhouse. It's been absolutely bonkers, to be honest. We had a tour with Crobot. We've got a tour with Breed 77 coming up. We played Chepstow Castle. It's been full on - full throttle!
Adam Healey: To be concise, we thought we had periods of momentum before but we hadn’t because now we actually know what momentum is. It's been good.
Richard Lee Mears: Yes, it’s been great. We have built since the last album. I liked playing Stonedead and all the rest. Everything has grown from there really. It’s been awesome.
Hotel Hobbies: You have played a lot of shows. Any particular highlights?
Adam Healey: For me personally, Steelhouse. It's not that it was any better than some of the other gigs that we've played as such. It's just that I've waited 15 years patiently to get back there. It was worth the wait. Then to follow that up with a gig in a castle felt like we stamped a K in the south-east corner of Wales.
Mark Donoghue: Yeah, Steelhouse. Walking out on stage and seeing that Welsh flag and the crowd going nuts was something! I must have had a little dust in my eye!
Hotel Hobbies: After winning the public vote to open Stonedead in 2025 and playing such a great set, it seems that was a very important springboard.
Richard Lee Mears: 100%. It has been the catalyst, I suppose. Getting in front of that many people has really pushed us all up to a new level, so to speak. It really is unreal. I mean, we thought we were doing well before that with the album and everything but every new thing that comes along, we are like, “Oh my God, what is going on here?” It is just going further and further up the ladder, which is exactly what we want.
Adam Healey: I think your idea of what a big gig is changes depending on what the biggest gig you have played is. I think Stonedead is a little bit of a sink-or-swim thing for bands because you get put in front of five thousand people on a big stage. You are on the same stage as the biggest bands and it is almost certainly going to be the biggest gig that you have played. It was for us.
We played the gig and I think the way that we came off was like, “Oh yeah, that is cool. We will do that again.” It changes the way we approach a gig now. Let us say there are one thousand five hundred people, it is still a very decent gig. It just changes the approach that you take to the gig, which I think helps elevate you anyway because you could not play those gigs the way that you do if you had not played the bigger ones. There are still only three or four gigs that we have played the size of Stonedead, probably three actually, so it is still almost a novelty to us really but we know we can do it now. That was like a launch pad into being a proper band.
Mark Donoghue: Absolutely. I think the way we have been received, especially at some of the bigger shows, reinforces to me personally that we must be doing something right. The fact that the crowd gets involved as well makes your confidence grow. If it was a bad show, or something went awry, you would understand why and think, “Hang on, what is going on?” But the response we have had is just cementing the fact that the hard work is paying off and that we are heading in the right direction.
Richard Lee Mears: At the moment we seem to have entered a new period where we are able to do whatever we want on stage. We played Hella Rocks two weeks ago and we played three covers; we played the first album and we got into a rehearsal space and just banged it out within a day.
Mark Donoghue: That is definitely one of the biggest things for me. We are at a stage where we do not have to worry about what the other person is doing and we are confident in the fact that we can go into a rehearsal space and, like Richard said, in one day, bang out the first album. We can rely on each other to know what everyone is doing, with the confidence that I know Richard has got his parts down, I know Adam has got his parts down and Karl has got his parts down and we are just together. And in the true sense of the word, rehearsal is rehearsing. You practise in the house and you get ready for your rehearsal. I think that is one of the big things that has happened.
Karl Meyer: Like everyone has said, we have played some great shows and gigs but at Hella Rocks, it just seemed like we were all firing at the same time. Everything just worked in unison and we just came off stage knowing that we had played just one of the best gigs we have ever played.
Hotel Hobbies: This year, you have released three standalone singles. Was this the course of action because you were not quite ready to record a whole album but wanted to keep your name out there?
Mark Donoghue: That was exactly it.
Adam Healey: It obviously has not skipped notice that we have had a subtle line-up change, so we kind of wanted to have some new music as the band that we are. I think there has been a slight change in timetable now as well because at the start of the year, we were very much thinking along the lines of, right, we will have new music out, as in a full body of an album in 2027.
But things have also picked up a bit in the live sense, so we have basically decided that we are going to spend next year continuing to promote March of the Gods and the three new singles as our current music and, fingers crossed, we will be playing to a considerably wider audience. It is looking like album three in 2028 now, essentially. We might change our mind the next week. Who knows? That is the current plan.
Karl Meyer: Well, there is definitely music on the cards now. We are writing stuff to go towards album three. It is just when we actually get the time to go into the studio to get them down.
Richard Lee Mears: I would say we have probably got around seven songs roughly there, unreleased and unrecorded anyway. It is just about actually finalising them and thinking, “Is this one good enough? Is that one good enough?” And if it is not, maybe ripping parts out and taking them and putting them together with something else or whatever. All we know is the next album has to be the best thing King Kraken has ever done.
Mark Donoghue: We are more critical now than we ever have been with our own material. The pressure is there to do better than the previous album and indeed the previous three singles.
Adam Healey: It is a tricky one, though because sometimes I am very much a fan of needing to road-test the songs. A: it is good to see what people think and, B: things change when you play them live. There is nothing more irritating than recording a track and then six months later, it sounds better. We do not want to fall into that trap. We are definitely going to avoid it with album three, whether we road-test it all or not. I do not know.
But I think as well, certainly in the last few months, we have felt like we have a fan-base that are familiar with the music but we keep playing to people now who are new to us. So, it does not feel like anything has gone stale. There are only so many times you can see the same faces listening to March of the Gods before you start to think, they probably fancy something new, do they not?
Hotel Hobbies: To talk about the songs from this year, A Call to War first. It appealed to me because I am a big War of the Worlds fan, particularly the original novel, so it is a really good theme for a song. I like the fact that it is from the human side and about the initial determination to deal with the Martian threat.
Mark Donoghue: Yeah, definitely, absolutely. Especially with that song, it was about how you would write a song about something you really enjoy. Take, for example, the theme of War of the Worlds. How do you write that from a perspective that is different from the story that everybody knows? So, you take a little pocket from that story and focus on it.
Hotel Hobbies: I remember when I was reviewing that particular single and wrote that it would be a great opener, which you went on to actually use it in just that way!
Richard Lee Mears: Yes, we read your review and were like, fuck it, let’s try it!
Hotel Hobbies: It is great song to unite the crowd right from the start.
Mark Donoghue: That was a conscious decision, as opposed to saying, this is war or war is coming or whatever. Call To War is like a rallying cry more than anything else.
Hotel Hobbies: Next, you released I Am the Apocalypse back in July, which is a different theme but an interesting one. You have talked about moving on from March of the Gods and getting better. The balance of melody and heaviness is something you have always had as a band but it is something you are becoming even more adept with as you move forward.
Richard Lee Mears: I totally agree with you. It is definitely something that has come from March of the Gods because there is a tiny bit of that on the first album but it is mostly the heavier edge. March of the Gods, especially Berserker, has that light and shade type of thing.
So, we kind of wanted that again, just showing people that we can do chill stuff, we can do mellow stuff and we can do heavy stuff. It was definitely a targeted sort of sound for I Am the Apocalypse and that was the first song that we wrote really after Pete left. And the chorus came about because Adam had just bought two amps and he was chugging on one of them and was like, “Oh my God, it sounds amazing.”
Adam Healey: The chorus was literally like, fuck you, I can chug. (laughing)
Mark Donoghue: I think that's the perfect example of what you meant by light and shade of the song. You get the mellow verses and then it just hits you like a wet salmon in the chorus.
Adam Healey: I remember Mark said to me, you should try and copy the vocal melody at the start of the guitar solo. And then, I had to take my mother to a hospital appointment and basically, to kill the time while she was in there, I sat in the car with the guitar and I wrote the guitar solo. Interesting gestation.
Hotel Hobbies: And just two days ago, you released Shadows Fall. A song – like Chainsaw Saviour from the last album – which is inspired by horror films. It is a source of inspiration that you like to revisit.
Mark Donoghue: It's my favourite genre. Outside of the band, I write horror fiction anyway and it's the stuff I feel most comfortable with. From a lyrical perspective, I see myself more as a storyteller as opposed to sharing thoughts and feelings. If I've got a story that I enjoy, I kind of like to share it. And that's what my approach to lyrics is.
Adam Healey: With Shadows Fall, it was the weekend before we were booked into the studio to record the singles. We had booked four days. We'd almost settled on the fact that we were going to record two tracks – Call To War and I Am The Apocalypse. We had an eight-hour band practice and we thought, maybe we'll do three tracks. So we wrote Shadows Fall the Saturday before we went into the studio.
Richard Lee Mears: I honestly think that Shadows Fall is the best of the three. I really, really like Shadows Fall. It's just that groove sort of heaviness. It's got everything in there for me.
Adam Healey: That middle bit right before the guitar solo is dying to be in like a Guy Ritchie film. It just sounds like it should be a soundtrack.
Richard Lee Mears: I think the vocals for that song especially are just absolutely awesome. Just the melody and the swing, you know what I mean? I said to Mark the other day that I think it's the best work he's done with us.
Karl Meyer: Well, that's my favourite song out of the three because of the groove, right? I love any music with groove, especially heavy metal music. There is so much groove in that and it's slow but not too slow. It's heavy.
Hotel Hobbies: You've continued to use Romesh Dodangoda for your production. He seems to completely understand you and how to get the best sound from you.
Mark Donoghue: Absolutely, he knows us now.
Richard Lee Mears: I think the thing is, some bands will use different producers and try to get a different sound and all the rest of it. I just think that once you have got that sound, why change it?
Mark Donoghue: If it's not broke, don't fix it.
Richard Lee Mears: We have always had the vision of sounding the best that we can. I don’t always like it when bands change their production styles. A recent example is Testament. The production on the new album is just not there compared to the other albums and it is just disappointing.
Mark Donoghue: Changing a producer can potentially make you sound like a different band altogether.
Richard Lee Mears: Romesh is a Grammy-nominated producer. Why would we want anyone else?
Karl Meyer: Exactly. What I like about Romesh is that when it was my turn to record, he literally just went straight to all the gadgets and pressed this, that and the other. He instantly had the sound that he wanted for me. There was no testing anything. He knew exactly what he was doing. It was done and dusted really quickly.
Hotel Hobbies: I saw Crobot at Stonedead, who were excellent. How were your few recent dates with them?
Mark Donoghue: They were exceptional. They were gentlemen throughout and they were absolutely hilarious. I will go on tour with them at the drop of a hat. I absolutely love that band and I love the guys. They're amazing.
Adam Healey: There's three main things we need to know about Crobot, right?
Mark Donoghue: He's going to bring up the bass sound. (smiling)
Adam Healey: I am absolutely going to bring up the bass sound. At Stonedead, Bishop, the guitarist, had a bit of a technical issue. There were about three minutes of just drums and bass and it did not matter, did it? It was just that bass sound, right?
The thing is, we played with them last December and Richard and I tried to sort Karl out then. We thought we had done it but playing with them again reminded us that, in fact, there is still some work to be done. We will work on it but thing one is that the rhythm section are just magnificent. I know they are brothers but they have got such a good rhythm section.
Thing two is that me and Bishop have got this brilliant alpha male thing going on. On the first tour, we had a little wrestle and it felt like a draw at the end, which is not good enough for me. So on this tour, we had a bit of a push-up push-off. He did teach me how to spin a guitar around as well, which I am going to have to put into a live show soon.
Richard Lee Mears: Now you’ve said it in an interview, you're going to have to do it!
Adam Healey: That’s thing three.
Karl Meyer: I'm going to be off stage when he attempts that!
Adam Healey: Watching them for the consecutive shows that we did this time, they have got such a relaxed way of letting their sets flow. Brandon interacts with the audience but they never feel like there are any awkward moments. There are no pregnant pauses or awkward bits. They are just such a slick live band. It is always a pleasure to watch them. I actually watched them every time we played with them and I cannot say that about any band that we have ever played with. I cannot not watch Crobot. They are a great band. Richard said they were our favourite band at Stonedead, didn’t he?
Richard Lee Mears: Yeah. They really were. I loved Accept but Crobot just nailed it.
Hotel Hobbies: In November, you are touring with Breed 77. You must be looking forward to that.
Mark Donoghue: When I was a young boy, I used to listen to them years and years ago and I was really into them. It's really strange now that I'm actually going to be sharing the stage with them. It's bonkers.
Richard Lee Mears: We know Danny, the guitarist, because we have played with his other band, The Heretic Order, a few times. The Crobot tour and the Breed 77 tour came through out of the blue on the same day. We were like, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ but it is really nice to be thought of as a band that can go on stage with these types of bands now. It is really going the way we want it to. That is what we want, just to keep on going and keep pushing up the ladder. We literally cannot ask for any more at the moment.
Hotel Hobbies: When you come off stage after playing with a band like Crobot and people may not have known you as well, do you feel that's another audience won over?
Mark Donoghue: 100%. The amount of people, especially on the Crobot tour, that come up to me and said, 'I've never seen you before but….' That statement happened loads and loads of times during that tour for us. So, it's really refreshing to me personally. If you get one new fan from a show, it's worth it.
Adam Healey: It feels like at some of those gigs, there's been a younger audience. I know that at the end of the day, you should be grateful of any audience, whoever they are. I normally disappear up in my little world when I play but I could not help but notice it at the last Crobot gig. There were these three teenage boys, literally stood straight in front of me. They stayed there for the entire set. Afterwards, I was trying my best to pack up but they really loved the gig.
And there's this, what's that little girl called Charlotte, the nine-year-old! She has seen us a few times and she turned up with an inflatable guitar that she asked me to sign. We saw her at Stonedead and she came up to me and gave me a little fist pump. There is just something about playing to the younger generation and being able to inspire them. There is nothing wrong with playing to 60-year-olds or whatever but they have already been inspired by people before. To be able to inspire someone who is younger and perhaps just discovering this music, there is something really special about that.
Hotel Hobbies: Are you able to talk a little bit about how the songs are written? How does it tend to work?
Mark Donoghue: We all have our own ideas but the way it always works and works best for us, is that we pile those ideas into rehearsal and kick them around a bit. We turn them upside down, rip them apart, glue them back together, stick them together and then rip them apart again. It is about coming up with the songs as a four-piece, in the same moment, in the rehearsal studio. There is no point in me writing a full song from start to finish because I could spend a whole week on a song, take it to practice and then have it ripped apart. It also keeps everybody in check because if the song is evolving live and happening in the room, there is more invested in it when we are actually going through that process together.
Adam Healey: That is all true, basically. But there is one thing that has changed. If you listen to MCLXXX and then March of the Gods and the new singles, the process has not fundamentally changed. There is one important difference though and that is something we will focus on for the third album as well. With the first album, we turned up, kicked some ideas around, let them mutate and then that is what was recorded. But with March of the Gods, we started with a concept of what we wanted to sound like. It was the same with the three singles. You can have ideas and see what happens but they have got to fit the framework of what you want. That is why March of the Gods sounds a lot more focused than MCLXXX. There was not any room for any slack. The songs tend to grow semi-organically but now there is a bit of... it is like that thing in the post office where you have got to check your envelope fits through the hole.
Mark Donoghue: Sometimes your envelopes are a little bit too big, so they have to be cut down a bit!
Richard Lee Mears: With the first album, it was just a collection of riffs put together and we were just lucky enough that it kind of sounded pretty good. Now we know what that King Kraken sound is. We know it's different to other things that are out there. We know what we want.
Adam Healey: The other thing as well is it is easier writing with fewer people in the band. Sometimes less opinion is better. Sometimes, you've got to give things a chance, that's fair enough. I think you can tell quite quickly if you want to be brutal, if something's going to work or not.
Hotel Hobbies: You mentioned the confidence in each other and just now Adam, you talked about fewer people in the band giving you more room for opinion. Were you ever tempted to go back to being a five-piece again because it feels like now you are very tight as this four-piece?
Adam Healey: I think King Kraken is the only band I have ever been in where there was a second guitarist. So when we were confronted with the situation where we were a four-piece, I know Mark definitely wanted another guitarist because, conversely, Mark has only ever been in bands with two guitar players. I think there is something that comes from having one guitar. It depends on who is playing but sometimes you can get more power from having a little bit of space. If there are fewer people in the band, the band is tighter. So what we have ended up with is a tighter band and I think we actually sound more powerful as a four-piece.
Hotel Hobbies: With two albums and the new singles, you have more songs to choose from when deciding what to play. Do you each have a particular favourite to play live?
Mark Donoghue: My absolute favourite at the moment is I Am the Apocalypse because to me it's quite anthemic. It's epic in nature for me. I really enjoy it.
Adam Healey: My favourite – and has been since the first time we played it - is March of the Gods. I love playing that track live. I go on the same trip every time we play live, remembering when we recorded it.
Richard Lee Mears: I actually don't have a favourite. I just enjoy it all.
Karl Meyer: If I had to pick one, I like Scream.
Hotel Hobbies: With the variation in set lengths when supporting or headlining, how do your discussion go about what to play on any particular night?
Richard Lee Mears: This is a funny story, right? One of our good friends – Keith - who comes to see us all the time - literally follows us all around the country - met us in Hull the other day on the Crobot tour and we were like, ‘We have got an hour tonight, so what are we going to play, boys?’ I just said, ‘Well, why do we not just leave Keith to choose the songs?’ So Keith literally chose the set that he wanted. It was a bit of a thank you to him for following us around.
Adam Healey: Yeah but there are certain fundamentals that we like. At the moment, Shadows Fall is always going to be in the set because it is the current track. March of the Gods always works well at the end of the set, while Call to War works well as an opener. At the moment, we are also using El Giganto as an opener too. Basically, the three new tracks will always be in the set, with the rest predominantly made up of songs from March of the Gods. Unless it is a really long set, the only tracks from MCLXXX that tend to come out are Man Made Monster or sometimes Green Terror. For a forty or sixty minute set, it is basically songs from March of the Gods and the three new singles.
Hotel Hobbies: My last question to all of you is, if everything went to plan over the next two or three years, where would you like King Kraken to be?
Mark Donoghue: Right. I've thought about this hard and I'm ready for this. I would be playing a show where Killswitch Engage are supporting us. (laughing)
Richard Lee Mears: (laughing) And the realistic plan is to work as hard as we can now to become a proper touring band and start going to Europe. I think for the next year, it will be about getting the right people in the right places. That means looking at the people who are working for us, whether that is the PR company, management, booking agent and all the rest of it and asking ourselves, ‘Are we happy with this? Are we happy with that?’ I think everything is going really well at the moment. We just need to keep that going and keep pushing ourselves up the ladder. As I said, I think that involves getting the right people in the right places.
Adam Healey: I think for me, in three years’ time, I measure it in terms of the amount of people you have hanging around in your entourage, right? (rest of the band laughing) So you mentioned Stonedead earlier. At Stonedead, I had a man following me around, giving me plectrums to give to people. It is really easy to see how people become arseholes, right? In three years, if I turn into more of an arsehole, that is fine. I work with a guy and I said to him, ‘Listen, if I get to the point where I can actually leave work and be a professional musician, I will take you with me.’ I do not even know why, really. Every time I say something, he laughs. So I said to him, ‘Look, I am going to take you with me, right? Your job is that whenever I say something, you laugh. No matter what.’
Jokes aside, have you ever seen Asomvel? Have you seen their stage set-up? Basically, they have got these six stacks. I want that just for me. I do not know who is carrying it but whatever. (all laughing)
Hotel Hobbies: It has been great to chat to all of you again and I have enjoyed being able to hear the new music in advance. I really like writing about it.
Mark Donoghue: Thank you. Thank you so much for your reviews and support as well.
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