2023 OUR MOST SUCCESSFUL YEAR YET

Today I thought it would be good to reflect on 2023 and how much of a success it was for this band. The original incarnation of Kaine was put together in 2009, so 15 years ago. The current version formed out of the ashes of the A Crisis of Faith line-up now close to 6 years ago.  Since 2018 we have been on a steady upward swing, recovering from what had happened in the past. Releasing Reforge The Steel helped send out a message that we were not only still going, but the standard of the band had not dropped at all with the line-up changes, this led to us being again able to grow our local shows and importantly opening Burrfest (headlined by Blaze Bayley) in 2020. We were then hit by the COVID lock-downs where we had an elongated period of releasing our Waystone EP and writing our new album After Extinction. We came out of COVID-19 relatively unscathed, having launched our Patreon, which has kept the band going through that period.

The crucial moment to set up our success for the year however came in 2022, before we released After Extinction, was getting the opportunity to tour once again as a support act. Previously we had toured with the now infamous Monument, and the legendary Mordred back in 2014, after that we did not get an opportunity to tour again without being asked to pay a buy-on fee. We never had the resources to buy on, and thus couldn’t afford to do those tours. For those who do not know, a buy-on is where the support band pays to play alongside a headline band, or sometimes a package of bands on tour. This is a set fee usually paid to the tour organiser, which is a huge risk as these slots are often, unpaid, early on (at doors), and in some cases, you are still paying for your fuel, travel, and accommodation and relying on merch sales, sales which are often taxed by the venues you are playing. These aren’t a new thing; these are a standard in the music industry and have happened for decades. You must have deep pockets or someone funding the venture to make that model work for you, and we have neither.

We were asked to jump on tour with Lillian Axe and Riot Act, and we had a blast touring with those guys throughout Britain in 2022. This was crucial for us because it showed people that we were good enough, and reliable enough, to be a tour support once again and helped us build relationships we’d otherwise never had. In 2023 we were asked to join Chris Holmes (ex-WASP) on tour, for what was an amazing experience playing a lot of new places and being seen by a bigger audience. We made a profit from the tours, were paid for every date, and made it work through merch sales.

Before we went on tour with Chris Holmes, I was kindly asked to help organise a run of dates in England for Riot Act in October touring the classic Riot album Fire Down Under, as part of their warmup for the British Steel Festival in France. Again, it showed a great deal of trust in myself and us as a band to enable that to happen. These shows were my first ever promoting an international act (from New York) and were a huge success, venues were full, and finishing the run of dates by selling out the legendary Crat & Horses venue in London before Riot Act headed out to France. It’s worth noting, that we managed to do all this during a period of rail strikes too, and during weeknights, something we were told was impossible.

We also celebrated 5 years together as the “Reforged” iteration of Kaine with a sold-out show at Three Wise Monkeys, Colchester last year. This is with a rival promoter switching his date to the same as ours on the same night, a few doors down, to try and trump our event and we still succeeded in selling the place out.

We broke over 5000 physical record sales in 2023, we have been streamed hundreds of thousands of times with huge growth being seen on our YouTube music platform, we toured twice, released a new EP, and two live albums as well as two new music videos.

It is worth mentioning that none of this would be possible without Alex Smith, Charlies Frankling (who acts as our crew), Rachel Woods (who takes a lot of or promotional pictures), Talon Payne of Gallow Wood Media, and Wayne Thompson of Unit One Studios who have all worked extremely hard for the band in their various areas not only in 2023, but in the years leading to that point.

2023 was our most successful year to date. Thank you for your continued support.