Kragen Lum a Thrash-Metal life

This was one of those moments that I´ve been waiting for, for a long time, I admire Kragen Lum so much, first of all, because he´s one of the guitarists of HEATHEN, which is my favorite (and underrated) Thrash-Metal band of all times, that´s just the beginning, then is also a guitarist of many other awesome bands, including EXODUS, so we had a lot to talk about, not just music, although every single issue got a close relationship with music, as you can read in this detailed talking that we had the pleasure to do and, now, we want to share with you all.

How’s it going and where are you right now?

Kragen: good thanks, I’m at home, I live in Little Rock (Arkansas) which is a state in the southern part of the U.S. it’s going okay this state does not have as many restrictions as California and some of the other states but everybody’s just being cautious and trying to socially distance and all that stuff everything’s pretty much normal these days at least normal for the last year.

So, everything is open you don’t have to wear a mask or anything like that outside?

Kragen: we have to wear masks we don’t wear masks outside if we’re just like walking out or we’re going to the dog park or anything like that we have to wear masks when we go inside to shop at stores and you know restaurants are open bars are open I don’t know if music venues are open I’m not really sure I don’t follow the local music scene all that much, to be honest, there isn’t much of a metal scene here there are some bands but I haven’t really heard of any shows going on I think that stuff really larger gatherings just can’t happen yet so.

What kind of music are over there in your area?

Kragen: there are some metal bands but it’s kind of like underground Death Metal and sort of more sludgy sounding stuff there’s a lot of blues and jazz and stuff that you would kind of expect in the south okay, that’s kind of more with the what the normal local music scene is here.

Are you used to hear all metal stuff?

Kragen: I actually just moved here about five years ago I spent most of my adult life and teenage years in southern California in Los Angeles so I grew up in the 80s metal scene of Los Angeles so I mean the early thrash metal in the Los Angeles area where I was a little too young to see like METALLICA before they moved up to the bay area and stuff like that but what I grew up with is I would see like bands like DARK ANGEL all the time the sort of other there was a whole scene there that was thrash and death metal and stuff like that but it was underground, Hollywood was dominated by more the hair metal bands and hard rock bands and stuff that so my early thrash band PSYCHOSIS we used to play even in Hollywood but you would post your flyers on like walk down Sunset Boulevard for example and post your flyers on all the telephone poles and when you walked back they would be covered up by POISON flies or something like that haha, so thrash metal was not very big in Los Angeles there was a big underground scene but it was mostly places like the country club which was in The Valley or in Orange County there was a place called Jezebel’s there were a whole bunch of these kind of underground metal places so I would go to see shows at those places all the time what whether it was bands that were touring and coming through town or more local bands like DARK ANGEL I mean they were one of my favorite bands when I first heard that and that them and all the bay area bands I think my band would have done a lot better if we had gone 500 miles north to the bay area.

How did you start with HEATHEN?

Kragen: it’s an interesting story actually I was playing in my band PROTOTYPE and that started in like mid 90s and is still going but we were looking for a separate singer at one point and I asked a friend of mine that worked for one of the metal labels like if he had a recommendation and he recommended Dave (David White) from HEATHEN so we actually got in touch with David and he came down and he auditioned for PROTOTYPE and this was right after “Thrash of the titans” (was a benefit concert held on August 11, 2001 at the Maritime Hall in San Francisco, California) when HEATHEN had gotten back together to do the benefit for CHUCK BILLY and he came down and a couple of times actually and auditioned for us and it didn’t work out but when HEATHEN needed a guitar player in 2007 he called me and the other guitar player and asked us if either one of us would be interested in going up to audition and I said yes and I learned I think it was about five songs and went up and auditioned and they asked me during the audition if I would join the band so it was pretty cool I mean one of my all-time favorite thrash bands being able to you know join them play with them write music for them it’s been great.

Wow! So that must have been quite surreal to play for a band that you’ve listened to for a long time, don´t you?

Kragen: yeah for sure, and I just playing those couple of the songs I learned were from “Victims of Deception”(1991) I learned a couple “Breaking the Silence”(1987) I think I learned like six or something, I learned a couple from their demo at that time 2005 demo, it was weird playing the songs with a band that I listened and I bought the tapes when they came out you know or the CDs or whatever really a big fan of the band I loved all those bands from that scene, I remember hearing EXODUS I remember hearing “Bonded by Blood” before it came out, it was available on the tape trading scene before the album was actually printed so you know and I loved it I wore out my two cassette copies of that and I have two different early CDs from that album I mean it’s I loved all of that stuff so it was really cool to be able to meet those guys and get to play music with them for sure.

Even just afterward being able to play with EXODUS and filling for Gary (Holt) for six years I manage EXODUS, I mean I told my wife the other day if when I was a teenager if I had looked at my cell phone (which didn’t exist when I was a teenager but haha) at all the recent calls that I had I would have not believed that I was talking to these people on a regular basis you know so yeah that’s amazing pretty cool I have to pinch myself sometimes. It’s been great I kind of transitioned from playing with the band to working on management stuff for him so it was really cool I also manage HEATHEN and I manage a couple of younger bands I manage HATRED and I manage WAR CURSE that just signed a Metal Blade and I work with a lot of other bands too I don’t officially manage them but I´m working with a TOXIK and ATROPHY and a bunch of bands that I kind of grew up listening to and it’s been really cool it’s been fun I like doing the behind the scenes work too not just playing.

How do you think it’s so much important that a musician like you being the manager of a band?

Kragen: the thing is that the band has to trust that the manager has their best interests at heart and I’ve known the guys for a long time now and there’s a level of trust that’s been built up where they just know that I have their best interests at heart and I think it’s the sort of the same thing for EXODUS they know how much I love their band and I want them to be successful as individuals and as a band, they’re all my friends so I want them to be successful and I think that’s an important thing with that maybe was missing in the early years I know that they had some great managers and they also had some not so great managers and I think that sometimes the business decisions that are made when you’re a band can affect the sort of trajectory of the band and then also just consistency which heathen has been bad at HEATHEN has not been consistent over the years you know an album in 87 and then wait four years and then an album in 91 and then Thrash Metal kind of died and when the band got back together in 2001 they started working on demo stuff right away but this band is notoriously slow and so again after the 2010 album I had music ready to go for the next record in 2012 and to 2014 I pretty much had most of “Empire the Blind” written already so we just through a series of sort of unfortunate events which were fortunate for some of us, I got to play with EXODUS but that sort of delayed everything but that just sort of delayed everything and I think ultimately what we need to get better at is being more consistent with releasing material especially in these days where the internet and social media is prevalent to wait too long everybody forgets about you an album cycle that would have been normally like a year of people being excited about it is now three months and then it’s over so our album came out in September and by the end of the year it was done, people had sort of moved on of course they remember it and they like it and they listen to it still but it’s not the hype isn’t there anymore and we couldn’t tour, so I think bands are going to have to adapt and probably come out with more music more regularly than they have been in the last few years there’s been a tendency with bands to because they don’t make money on the albums anymore, they make money online so they focus now on the touring and the album is more or less like a requirement to “okay well we haven’t released an album for a while we got to release one so we can go out on tour” and consequently I think what happened, at least for me, I saw the a sort of decrease in the quality of new music that was coming out in this kind of music for a while it felt like we have to get something out but it wasn’t like I have to get something out that’s amazing it was like we have to do this so we can go back out on tour to keep the machine of the you know sort of band running and I think bands are gonna have to adapt now I think they’re going to have to come out with more stuff more regularly and there’s going to have to be a certain level of quality because ultimately nowadays there is a hundred times more music to listen to than when we were younger there aren’t just a few record companies that have a roster of artists there are many record companies and then there are self releases and there’s so there’s a lot of competition and I think it’s harder these days to stand out against the competition so fans are doing whatever they can to sort of find a way to get around that.

So speaking of the last album you mentioned that you didn’t get a chance to tour do you have any idea when that will be it has it been pushed back will you go back into the studio to write something else and then tour with that album playing the other album songs as well?

Kragen: that´s probably the most likely scenario honestly everything that was rescheduled from last year to this year is now being rescheduled to 2022 and we’re seeing festivals all canceling or postponing again and I for us I would like to get back into the studio and put out another record as all of these bands as the guys in them are getting older it’s going to be harder and harder to get to do like the heavy  touring which is a double-edged sword so there’s this amazing component of being able to go everywhere and play shows and interact with the fans and it’s all that part of it is amazing the travel though is it’s hard on people get sick all the time and the travel is it’ll wear you out I mean just the rigors of it just for us to do a South American tour for example I mean literally the schedule is you fly from show to show you get there you eat something you basically if you’re lucky take a nap you play the show you go back to your hotel for two hours sleep get up go to the airport fly to the next show and it’s crazy hard on that one so that obviously that it’s less rigorous in other places when you have a tour of us and all that stuff but I think ultimately what we’re going to end up seeing is less extensive touring and more music from the bands and ultimately that in a way it’s sort of like back to how it was in the 80s, I mean in the 80s what would happen is the bands would end and early 90s they would record an album they would go out to do a U.S. tour and a European tour and they would maybe if they were lucky go to Japan or somewhere else and then they would go home and then they would write another record and they would do it all over again every year and a half or two years right but it wasn’t like we’re on the fourth leg of our European tour and we just came back from India and China and bands didn’t do that they didn’t spend years and years on the road unless they were METALLICA and could afford to do that, ultimately touring is also expensive, renting a bus and all the stuff that goes into it can be really pricey to do it I think we’re going to see more music and less extensive touring but we’ll see, who knows every band is going to be different.

It looks like you are a very strong team with Lee, how do you work with him?

Kragen: what’s great is that he and I developed a really great relationship I mean he’s one of my really great friends and playing wise we just hit it off we’re a good team in terms of playing together and we’ve got a lot of experience we toured together a lot with HEATHEN and then I toured a lot with him with EXODUS and kind of when you’re touring like with EXODUS we did some of the most heaviest amount of touring that EXODUS had ever done while I was playing with them and you develop a really great chemistry you’re playing even with me and Tom (Hunting, drums), I love playing with Tom and it was easy especially after a while he’s such a great drummer and then you develop this chemistry and you know with really with the whole band it was it was great so you know Lee and I benefited from that for sure and then he and I just kind of think similarly in terms of music there’s this underlying sort of classical music influence in even it’s sort of buried maybe in in a way but he grew up in a household where he had a father that was a conductor and a mother that was an opera singer and my mom studied opera and music and you know used to sing for backup for Dean Martin in the old Hollywood days and so you know we have similar influences and stylistically I think we’re able to play off of each other well because of that it’s easy when you have a musical connection with somebody it’s easier to play music with them.

Do you get that connection immediately or you were saying before sometimes it can develop over time once you get to play with each other a bit more?

Kragen: I can’t speak for him exactly but I think when I went to audition for HEATHEN I think that he recognized that it would be a good match I think you can see that you can sort of getting that immediate thing but it really takes time to sort of developing, you have to get to know the person and then you have to get to know like stylistically what they’re looking for or what you’re looking for and I think in this case it was just a good fit I mean stylistically we have a lot of similar tastes and there are differences too, I like the stuff he doesn’t like and vice versa but that’s a way we have enough similarities where it can kind of lock-in together and we play similarly as well rhythms especially.

Do you write music together?

Kragen: no, I mean when we did the “Evolution of Chaos”(2009) album I was a producer for the video game company Activision at that time and I worked there for like a decade and what I would do when I joined HEATHEN as I would work Monday through Friday and then on Saturday morning I would fly up to the Bay Area, and then I would get off the plane and go to rehearsal and then we would rehearse and then I would stay at Dave’s overnight and then we would rehearse again on Sunday and then I would fly home and then go back to work on Monday and uh that we basically we did that while we were writing and then while we were recording the “Evolution of Chaos” so we got to actually all play the songs together and it was kind of more like the old days we didn’t sit and write together necessarily we would write separately but then come together and we could enhance each other’s music a little bit by adding some element to it for example I would add an overdub to one of his songs you know something some layer that would sit on top of what he came up with and vice versa kind of thing on the new album we really didn’t have that luxury we’re sort of all spread out all over the country, the drummer´s in New York I moved to Arkansas Dave now lives in Florida at least the only one that’s still in the bay area the bass players in L.A. and so it’s it wasn’t really possible for everyone to get together but what I started doing several years ago was learning how to use the recording technology on the computer to be able to map everything out so that’s what I did with all the demos that I did for the for the new record is I would map out everything and essentially then just send it off to the guys and get their feedback on it there was one song for example that we left off the record that we didn’t record and it just didn’t quite fit with the other stuff there was another song which ended up being the title track where the guys were the music is cool but I don’t like the vocals kind of a thing and I would basically I went back and ripped that song apart and rearranged it and put all new vocal melodies and lyrics and everything on it so there’s collaboration there but it’s not sort of the old-school way where you sit down and you write together you know and then when you get in the studio there’s even a different thing, Lee would say I hear this thing on top of this song you know can I try it I say yeah go for it let’s try it, let’s make it we’re very open in that way where we don’t have an ego it’s kind of like if you have a better idea let’s hear it, let’s make it the best that it can be and I think that that’s a good way for collaboration in the studio is to just be open to trying different things to make the song be the best that it can.

What program are you using to map out the songs?

Kragen: most people record with pro tools these days I actually I’m a long time Sonar user um which was made by a company called Cakewalk they’re all more or less the same it’s just what you’re used to and now I think so far and Cakewalk got bought out by another company and now I think it’s called band lab or something it’s some dumb name but it’s the same software. After I worked for Activision there was a period of time where I was a freelance video game editor and what I did was I would edit the voiceovers for all the dialogue in the games and I would use whatever software I didn’t care I would use an old Sony what was that called Sony Soundforge or whatever, I’m pretty good with technology so ultimately it’s like once I learn where everything is they’re all basically they do the same thing so I use Sonar and I recorded I would record my rhythm tracks and I would record fake bass and record vocals and program the drums and try and get everything mapped out and then we would make adjustments as we needed to whether it was after discussing with the guys or even in the studio, I might program something for the drummer that’s impossible because I’m not a drummer and so we figure it out and he might come up with something really cool and then I would go home and I would change the guitars to work with it you know after the drums were recorded.

How is your creative process to write music?

Kragen: honestly the way I used to write was more I have a whole bunch of riffs I think go together and the vocals were like an afterthought and I think most thrash metal was kind of written like that back in the day and now I have a much more of a song approach and there will be times where I have a riff for a chorus for example and I’ll come up with a melody and I’ll say yeah man the melody’s great but one of the chords is clashing and I’ll just change the riff and it’ll still be a good riff but it but it will work more with all the pieces and I think that’s really the hardest thing with thrash metal is when you’re playing this kind of music sometimes there’s not a key center and what I mean by that is it’s harder to make a vocal melody work and we have a melodic vocalist so I want to make sure that David sounds awesome, I want those vocal melodies killer and sometimes you have to rearrange the riff a little bit to and the music to support the vocal and I think that’s really the main difference with like my sort of more recent songwriting stuff is I’m paying attention to the whole picture instead of just my guitar parts so it’s I think that’s why there aren’t more melodic thrash metal bands where there’s a melodic singer to be honest with you, because it’s hard to fit that in with the music it’s a lot easier just to have somebody growl or do the Zetro thing or Death Metal where they’re screaming over it or whatever it’s a lot easier because you’re what you’re doing in that case is you’re taking the melodic aspect of it away and you’re doing more of a rhythmic thing with it and you can it’s easier to fit the rhythm with the rhythm stuff that’s going on but not as easy to fit the melody.

That’s interesting, I love how David sings you know it’s quite different to the thrash metal style.

Kragen: he’s a real singer he’s a 70s rock era singer, singing in a metal band I think DIO and stuff like that all the great singers that sort of all the metal bands emulated there for a little while and David can do all of that so with this album we really my goal was to make sure that everything that he did sounded awesome and that even included we tuned down from E to D standard on this album because that’s where David’s natural vocal range was right before he rejoined HEATHEN before “Victims of Deception” he was in this band called LAUGHING DEAD and they put out a three song demo and I always loved his voice on that and I went back before we were working on “Empire of the Blind”(2020)  I went back and I was like what is so great about this why do I like his voice so much in there and I checked and they were tuned to D and it’s just his natural range it just naturally fits that band had tuned down for David’s vocal range and they did it for a purpose and so anyway I think that all of these things you know we really worked hard to make it so that every bit of the music and all the elements and everything about it were the were the best that they could be you know whether it was the songs or the performances.

And now HEATHEN has new project like the live album, isn´t it?

Kragen: we actually recorded a live album on The Evolution of Chaos Tour, it was recorded in Greece I think it was 2012 and we were enough material to be a double album I mean we made OBITUARY wait for so long to play after us I apologize after we got off the stage but we recorded the concert and we just never finished the project so that’s one of the things that we’re working on, we have a bunch of different things in the works right now we’ve got that we’ve got the “Victims of Deception 30th anniversary edition” that I’m working on.

In terms of the remaster are there any elements of the mix that you want to change or well we’re not going to be removing?

Kragen: I think a lot of people when they hear remaster they’re like I don’t want to remaster because like maybe they got the MEGADETH remasters and you can hear that Dave Mustaine re-recorded some vocals for it we’re not doing that what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to the process when you make an album is you make your final mixes and back in the day those final mixes would be committed to a tape basically and there and then that tape would be taken over to a mastering lab and then they would take the final mixes and enhance the overall eq and loudness and everything to make it so that it was the final product, so what we have is those final mixes of “Victims of Deceptions” that that haven’t been mastered yet and we’re going to take those so it’ll be the same mix that you’ve always heard it’s just that it’s going to be properly remastered and not just remastered from a CD so Metal Mined in Poland did a reissue of “Victims of Deceptions” number of years ago which I have on CD and it’s on a like gold CD and it looks fancy and everybody thought it was remastered well I compared it to the original master sounds exactly the same there’s no difference they didn’t do anything to it at all if they said it was remastered then maybe they made it a little bit louder I don’t know but it’s there’s no difference in in terms of the mastering what we would do is hope that it would enhance the clarity a little bit and bring it up to sort of normal modern standards of clarity you know modern recording is much there’s much more clarity in it these days and some people hate that and they wish that it was an old recording drowned in reverb and everything you know which I don’t get that but that clarity it can be good and it can be bad in different ways, you don’t have the warmth of the old recordings this way we’re going to have the warmth of the old recording and it’ll be mastered properly we’re probably going to have Zeus remaster it like he did with the ”The Evolution of Chaos” and the album has so much more warmth and dynamics than it did the first time it’s pretty incredible.

When you say clarity a is saying brightness slightly more bright?

Kragen: no, basically uh when you recorded to tape there was all this analog equipment and it would and it you know and sometimes in a good way it would color the sound and with the digital recording age you don’t have that warmth you might have a tube preamp which is an analog piece of gear that you use but overall the recording quality is just there’s more clarity to it so it’s not a brightness it’s almost like you it’s an almost like you if you had a speaker in front of you and you put a blanket on top of it and you heard it was kind of monthly and I don’t know it sounded like this and then you took the blanket off and suddenly it was crystal clear yeah that’s what we’re talking about yeah that’s kind of the difference is those some of those old albums it sounds like they had a blanket on them you know when it when and what we’re talking about doing is mastering it so that it’s like you take the blanket off and you’re like wow I never heard them playing this part before like this it just didn’t come out clearly I always wondered what that riff was but it but I couldn’t hear it very clearly it sounded muffled that’s what we’re talking about and it’s not remixing it we don’t that was one thing we actually had the opportunity to remix it and I asked Lee I said what do you want to do you want me to have them transfer the actual tracks so we can remix it or do you just want to remaster it and he said out of all the old albums including evolution, up through evolution, he’s like that’s the only album I like the mix on he doesn’t like the mix on breaking the silence or the evolution of chaos he just doesn’t like the way they came out but with victims he loves the way it came out so he didn’t want to remix it and so we’re just you know that’s if we could do the same thing with breaking the silence if those tapes didn’t burn in a fire unfortunately uh we would actually get all those tracks and remix it from scratch because that album I’ve heard some of the roughs that they did and it sounded way heavier and clearer and not muffly and sort of rock and roll it’s kind of has like a rock and roll mix to the breaking the silence album which just doesn’t sound like a thrash mix

When do you think the remastered version will be released?

Kragen: well it’s definitely going to be in the second half of the year at this point okay I’ve really got to drive it forward it’s when you’re dealing with a big company like warner brothers and they have a corporate legal team and you know it’s slow-moving, unfortunately, a lot of the stuff in the music business when you’re dealing with the big record companies things go very very slowly so once I feel comfortable that the agreement is all set you know we’ll start moving forward with everything I have the elements also we could start doing it today I just want to make sure that we’re you know that everything’s good to go yeah cool fair enough

How was your history with the EXODUS?

Kragen: I was kind of an outsider to the scene until I joined HEATHEN because I grew up in the L.A. area so I didn’t know those guys from you know from back in the day like lead us, Lee and Dave went to high school with Tom and Kirk Hammett and all those guys so like there’s a connection that those guys have that i don’t have with them but I met them through touring with HEATHEN we did a number of tours where we were touring with EXODUS and sharing a bus and all that kind of stuff and i think it was in 2011 maybe we did this tour in Europe where it was SEPULTURA, EXODUS, HEATHEN and MORTAL SIN and DESTRUCTION, Lee was doing double duty meaning he was playing with HEATHEN and then playing with EXODUS later and so I learned the song deranged from “Pleasures of the flesh” and I would go up in the middle of the EXODUS set and give Lee a break I would basically grab his guitar play deranged with EXODUS and then give him a little breather so that was my first experience playing with the band was playing that stuff and then there would be other times where we did a tour where Rick (Hunolt) was filling in for Gary in Europe and he wasn’t available for soundcheck so I would play for him at soundcheck and play “Bonded by Blood” or whatever and I just sort of basically just you know I started to make little bits of a connection playing wise with the guys at that point and then they you know they asked me to fill in and do a full tour in 2013 when that was for “Exhibit b” and then when they needed somebody to do you know more extensive touring they asked me if I would do it and I said yes and you know the connection with those guys really built up over those years of touring and the friendship and everything, even to a certain extent with Gary when he wasn’t there I mean he had to trust that I was doing justice to what he wrote and what he would normally play and so there’s just like I said that with HEATHEN there’s just sort of a trust that built up over the years and so it’s been great, those guys are awesome they’ve their new record is done and you know ready more or less ready to go and I was just listening to the final mix of it of “Persona Non Grata” yesterday and it’s killer I think everybody’s going to be stoked with it and I’ll be happy to have a guitar solo on one of the songs so that’s pretty cool great dream come true

Do you have any unique story touring with EXODUS?

Kragen: I did the Soundwave Festival and online shows that were you know surrounding it uh that was also in man that must have been 2015 also that’s a crazy story I got a phone call at 8 30 in the morning from Lee (Altus) and I had done one tour with EXODUS prior to that for the exhibit album in Europe and then that was in 2013 so I hadn’t played any of the songs or done anything for like a year and a half he called me at 8,30 in the morning this was like I think sound wave was in January it sounds very mistaken, he called me and he was like “hey you know can you go to Australia with EXODUS” I said “sure no problem when?”, Lee said “tonight”, and I was doing some freelance work and I basically bailed out of that and spent the day packing and practicing and there were two songs that I didn’t know from the new because “Blood in, Blood out” out was new at that point and it was insane that’s crazy we had a couple of great festival shows I think we played with before JUDAS PRIEST which was amazing and then we did some off date shows with FEAR FACTORY and it was a cool experience we got we talked our tour bus driver or our bus driver not really tour bus it was like more like a mini bus we talked her into driving us to the Gold Coast one day and she wasn’t supposed to but she said yeah fuck it let’s go so we went there on the beach basically for the day which was cool.

Can you enjoy traveling when you’re on tour like that time?

Kragen: it just depends on what it is there are some times where you finish a gig and as soon as the crew loads out you have to go and it’s a 14-hour drive somewhere and you’re basically trapped on the bus for 14 hours so there are those times and then there are other times where it’s like we’re playing in Barcelona and we have the day off before so we can go to the beach and hang out and enjoy it we’ve been you know we try to maximize those times you know just depends on what the travel schedule is really

How do you normally spend that time on the bus on the on those 14-hour bus rides what do you normally do to pass the time?

Kragen: what I ended up doing most of the time is I would stay on my American time schedule so I would basically stay up until the morning in Europe go to bed when it would be you know time to go to bed at home and then get up in the afternoon like it was morning my time it was a way for me to sort of get avoid jet lag and we just stay up and hang out listen to music, drink, what play uno I mean whatever we do to pass the time on the EXODUS bus and then the rep I mean and then sleep and I don’t sleep well on the bus so it’s like just kind of lay there.

Do you ever write stuff when you’re on tour, like on the bus getting ideas for songs and stuff like that?

Kragen: it can be hard to find a place what we end up doing on the buses a lot of times is cram the bus as full of people as possible whether that means sharing with another band or whatever and it’s a way to save money so it’s not like you have anywhere private where you can go and sit you know there’s somebody everywhere so it can be hard to write whenever I’ve been able to write anything on tour it’s mostly been at the venue at soundcheck or finding a quiet place at the venue and grabbing my guitar and sitting somewhere you know I wrote parts of the “Blind…” on tour but it was more like coming up with the idea and then remembering it and then going home and really working everything out how do you remember it.

I saw you are the administrator of social media, so do you have a lot of work there?

Kragen: I can’t keep up sometimes, social media to me is one of those things where I enjoy, spending time in the group, don’t get me but a lot of what I have to do is like it’s busy work to me like I have to post I have to do this whereas like with the Facebook group like there’s more of interaction there, you know what I mean, and I try to answer people’s questions on Instagram if I post something and people have comments or questions, on YouTube same thing I answer all the stuff but it ends up being time-consuming and I don’t want to spend all my time on social media I have work to do, I like Instagram a little bit more and there’s less political stuff I don’t stop scrolling through my Facebook feed a long time ago I’ll pick out a couple of things that I like but otherwise I go on there, really to talk about music and connect with the fans or whatever is positive I don’t like the negative part of it.

We really wanted to know a little bit more about you, about the person behind this stage, we really appreciate your time and all the things that you talk to us about, thank you so much KRAGEN.

Follow KRAGEN LUM at:

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/protokragen

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kragenlum/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3Imrvu40lCaSh7znzian0a

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kragenlum/

Follow KRAGEN LUM in all these bands:

EXODUS: https://exodusattack.com/site/

HEATHEN: https://heathenthrash.bandcamp.com

PROTOTYPE: https://prototypeonline.bandcamp.com

PSYCHOSIS: https://www.psychosisthrash.com

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