Bloodstock 2024 – Band Feature: King Kraken

Bloodstock Open Air 2024 is right around the corner. Taking place August 8th to August 11th, the UK’s premier metal festival has, once again, delivered a stellar line-up. Featuring four stages of music and a litany of bands from within the rock and metal world, alongside numerous other forms of entertainment (such as official bin jousting)! You don’t want to miss out, so get off that fence, and pick up your tickets now!

Buy Bloodstock Open Air 2024 tickets here.

There are a lot of bands on the bill, and some you may not be that familiar with, which is where we come in. As is our yearly custom, we will be running features on many of the bands playing, aiming to give you some insight into who they are, what they do, and why they are a must see at the festival.

King Kraken

The Kraken is hungry! And it’s feeding time!

Now doesn’t it feel like the heavy and groovy sound of the South Wales five-piece rock band, King Kraken has been around a lot longer than six years? Which speaks volumes about the impact this band has had.

Formed in 2018, a handful of demos (Kidnap and War Machine) preceded their debut EP, ‘Chaos Engine’ in 2020.  However, it was the release of their debut full-length album, ‘MCLXXX’ in 2023 that truly brought the Kraken to the surface. Even though they had already built up on stellar reputation on the live circuit, this album got their rock sound in more ears than ever. The single ‘Haddonfield 78’ alone had racked up some impressive streaming numbers.

The album, a collection of songs inspired from a famous list of horror and sci-fi movies that had an early impact on the band’s vocalist and main wordsmith, Mark Donoghue. It lived up to expectations as King Kraken well and truly delivered on the promise of punchy hits of addictive noise.

It’s in the live arena where King Kraken really comes to life though, and you will rarely find a time when they’re not playing shows somewhere around the country. 2024 has been another busy one too, with them playing Rockmantic Festival, supporting Crowbar, headlining Smoke on Trent Festival, Friday Night at Station 18 Festival, playing the London Metal 2 the Masses Final as a guest band, and so much more.

You might wonder how they find time to write any new music, but rest assured, the beast never rests and King Kraken have been busy preparing new music to come later in 2024. First though, Bloodstock, and an EMP stage set on the Friday of the festival that promises to be unforgettable. Don’t take our word for it though. We spoke to King Kraken about what it means to play Bloodstock 2024, what the festival means overall, and what attendees can expect from their show.

We entered the South Wales MT2M competition back in 2019 and we came 3rd so we know what it’s like to be so close to something and have it taken away. We were absolutely gutted, now be awarded it and given a slot is an unbelievable feeling. It’s going to be the biggest thing we do this year. Bloodstock is our next gig so all our preparation, focus and planning is on that at the moment.

Bloodstock in general is the place to be for any band, we’re treating this as our biggest show to date, so head down arse up full steam ahead! Bring on the 9th of August! Massive riffs, head banging tunes, chest crushing bass, neck snapping leads, vocals that sound like he swallowed half a ton of gravel, possibly some new songs and TENTACLES.

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