After Extinction

KAINE: OUR 2022 – TWO EPs, A NEW ALBUM AND A TOUR….

21 Dec 2022 — Leave a comment

I thought I would do a write-up on the year with the band given it’s been our busiest ever.  In the early part of the year, we played a run of gigs put on by One Eye Toad Records which really helped us get back on the road again after the Covid-era restrictions were finally lifted in most cases.  Most of these gigs were with Neverworld and Planet Fatale, two bands we have played with on a number of occasions over the years and with who we enjoy playing alongside. It’s worth mentioning that John Morter who organised these gigs and helped us get back to a regular gigging schedule sadly passed away last month. For all of his hard work and dedication to the scene, he will be greatly missed.

Coda – 9/3/2022

During that run of gigs, we had a one-night-only reunion with Anthony Murch on lead guitar. Ant was in the band from 2012-2015 and played on our first two albums. Anthony again played songs from both his time in the band and later albums since his departure.  He’s currently playing alongside our former drummer Chris MacKinnon (who likewise joined in 2012, but after our debut album before leaving in 2018) in a band called It’s Not A Phase Mum, covering the 2000’s era classics which can be found here.

We made our return to two of our favourite venues this year too, both the Melbourn Rock Club and the Rock Den in Hatfield, both of which were fun nights.

A large portion of the year has been taken up with recording, editing, mixing, mastering, and so on. We worked extremely hard to get our new album After Extinction finished this year, as well as recording a further 10 tracks for two EPs, one of which has been released digitally and the other is currently being worked on. I have said previously that I cannot remember a time the band has been busier and 2022 certainly was a challenging year, but I feel a great relief to know everything on our end is now completed and there is very little remaining to do going into 2023.

It is worth mentioning that there will be a new Falling Through Freedom t-shirt and patch coming to all our Patreon’s soon, with two EPs (which include a multi-disc set) on CD heading out to everyone paying £3 or more ASAP. We have been slightly delayed in getting these out due to the Extinction After EP still being finalised! These will be with you soon, depending on Royal Mail strikes!  

In August of course we joined the Lillian Axe/Riot Act (ex-Riot) tour as a replacement for Kim Melville. This is the first tour this line-up has done, and we had an amazing time on the road, and we are very thankful for the opportunity to play with two exceptional bands here in the U.K.

We aptly finished the year with two hometown shows in Colchester both at the Brewhouse on the 25th of November and Coda, on the 14th.

We also introduced a new Patreon tier, a band backer tier which was to help the band fund an opportunity we were recently offered. Without giving too much away at this stage, an official offer/contract has come through and we used some of the new Patreon funds to have the offer independently accessed by an expert, as well as general guidance on the best route forward for the band in 2023, with more the be revealed at a later date.

AFTER EXTINCTION BREAKS 42THOUSAND STREAMS SINCE RELEASE

15 Nov 2022 — Leave a comment

Since the release of our album back in September, we have been keeping a close eye on where our album is being streamed. We still don’t have all the data from all the stored but so far the results are:

  1. YouTube:  32,139
  2. Spotify: 3,836
  3. Bandcamp Streams: 3,084
  4. Facebook: 2,751
  5. Apple: 267
  6. CD Sales (Bandcamp): 121
  7. Downloads (Bandcamp):  82
  8. Itunes Sales: 0
  9. Amazon Sales: 0

Total Streams: 42,067

Total Sales (digital and physical): 203

YouTube continues to be the place where the album is most streamed, with Spotify in second, but some distance behind. Free streams on Bandcamp are just over 3k now, converting into 82 purchases.

The growing trend still shows the audience moving away from physical media and paid-for downloads and towards streaming services which is in line with industry reports on music sales. However, to have had over 42k streams since the album release so far is an impressive number for a band our size and we can only hope this continues going forward.

2022 HAS BEEN OUR BUSIEST EVER YEAR!

11 Nov 2022 — Leave a comment

I thought I would do a write-up on the closing period of what has been one of the busiest periods in the band’s history.

As many will know, we started work on After Extinction back in 2019, the plan was to put it together and record it in 2020 however Covid happened, and everything was delayed. Trying to finish this album while trying to work on our Patreon projects has been a challenge! We only just finished recording the After Extinction album this year, before editing, mixing, and mastering it enabling us to finally release it digitally in September. We’ve been set back a year and playing catchup.  

The After Extinction album has been one of our most successful records on launch, despite an initially slow start the pre-orders were over a 100, with additional downloads and our streaming numbers for the new album have reached record numbers due to the success on YouTube. It obviously feels good to have that sort of response. What’s interesting is that in terms of reviews and press coverage, this album has received the least amount of media attention. We have had two reviews in so far, one being good and one average.  Obviously with finances tight we don’t have the finances to pay for a press agent, manager, PR team, or whatever else, so we really rely on word of mouth and our own social media. So far, the best promotion for the new album has come from the NWOTHM Full Albums channel.

The album was a departure from much of the sound and imagery we were known for, so it was a gamble, there’s a lot less NWOBHM influence on the new record compared to previous. It’s a darker, heavier album than any of our previous releases and deals with much more complex subjects lyrically. I am glad most of the feedback has been positive.

On top of finishing the new album, we are still catching up with the backlog of work to be done with our EPs. We had the 21’ Patreon EP which has been delayed due to the need to focus on getting the album done. I will have finished recording the vocals on the 25th of November (I hope!) and we can begin the mixing stage after that. On the Falling Through Freedom EP, I will have hopefully finished recording that on Sunday. I am also getting the artwork completed with the new artist, you can see a sneak peek of the 21’ EPs art here.

We have never had a year where we worked on three different studio releases simultaneously, it has been a massive workload to juggle but I am feeling a great sense of relief now were almost there with both EPs and I can only apologise for the delay in getting these out to you!

The 21’ EP, which will be named soon when the artwork is released, is a heavier release than even our new album! 5 brand new songs, again continuing a darker tone to previous Kaine material. The 22’ EP is five songs to celebrate ten years of our debut album, which includes re-recordings of 3 songs from the original album and two that didn’t make the original release.

On top of the studio work, and our regular gigs and rehearsals we also jumped on a tour with Lillian Axe and Riot Act in August which was a great experience. So, this year we have worked on three releases and toured! As I said I can’t recall a time when we were as busy as we have been this year! We will have played 22 shows by the years end too, having played everywhere from Hastings to Edinburgh, to Swansea and back to Colchester!

So, what’s the plan? After we have released both of the new EPs, we will be announcing our 2023 Patreon pack! Next year there will be yet another new EP, shirt, and patch and we will have details of those soon.

You can order the new album here, and grab both new EPs here.

– Rage

AFTER EXTINCTION BREAKS 100 CD PRE-ORDERS

5 Nov 2022 — Leave a comment

Our CD has finally broken 100 pre-orders on Bandcamp. This means the album has covered the cost of the printing for thew new CD. the CD will be printed to the highest industry standards and limited to just 500 copies. The CD comes in a super jewel case and contains a full colour lyric booklet. You can still pre-order the album for a lower price here.

AFTER EXTINCTION CDS ARRIVE FRIDAY – WILL SHIP NEXT WEEK!

31 Oct 2022 — Leave a comment

The After Extinction CDs will arrive on Friday, will be signed (where requested) over the weekend and will begin shipping from Monday next week. The price from Monday will go up to £15 per CD, but we’ll continue to honour the pre-order price for the remainder of this week. You can grab the CD at the reduced price here.

CD sales represent a large part of the band’s income, we thankful to everyone who pre-ordered the CD and helped us fund the cost of printing the release.

AFTER EXTINCTION CLOSE TO 35K STREAMS IN JUST OVER A MONTH

25 Oct 2022 — Leave a comment

Our new album After Extinction continues to perform well in terms of streams. The album has accumulated 34,852 so far, and that’s without numbers for other services such a Deezer, Amazon and so on yet to be reported. The breakdown is as follows:

  • YouTube: 26,077
  • Bandcamp: 2,660
  • Spotify: 3,465
  • Facebook: 2,650

It is clear that YouTube is the most popular platform for people to listen to the new album. By comparison physical sales lag way behind at just 90 CD sales, even at a reduced price, and standalone paid downloads just 65 purchases even at a reduced rate of £1.

You can order the new album here.

AFTER EXTINCTION BREAKS 10K VIEWS IN A MONTH AT NWOTHM FULL ALBUMS

22 Oct 2022 — Leave a comment
The album has been played 10,023 times already on the channel.

Our new album has broken ten thousand plays over at NWOTHM Full Albums! The new album has easily been our most successful for streaming on release as not only has NWOTHM Full albums been a success but all three single releases generated thousands of plays before the release of the album, with the single A Slave to The Grind being played over 10,099 times alone!

For those who prefer CD’s, we’re continuing to honour the pre-order prices until the finished product is shipped. You can order from here.

AFTER EXTINCTION ALBUM ARTWORK APPROVED FOR PRINTING

17 Oct 2022 — Leave a comment
The album has had over 9500 plays on NWOTHM Full Album

We have given the approval to the final artwork for our new album artwork with the printers. The job will now begin and we are hopeful the CD’s will be available to be sent out to those who have pre-ordered soon. We will be honouring the pre-order price until they have been sent out, so to get the limited edition CD at the reduced price please click here.

ALBUM PRINTING UPDATE – CDs COMING ASAP

12 Oct 2022 — Leave a comment

The artwork templates are with the printers for checking and all the tracks have been uploaded. As previously stated, these will again come in Super Jewell cases, including a full lyric booklet and the CDs will be printed to the highest industry standard. Once these are given the green light the printing will begin and then it’s just a case of getting the CDs shipped back so they can be sent out.

Unfortunately, the pre-orders did not cover the costs of the printing of the CDs, and we again had to borrow money to fund the difference in order to get these printed. Streaming numbers so far have been strong, but the revenue from these streams is paid out later down the line and wouldn’t cover the costs of the printing either.  This has meant we had a delay in paying for the printing to take place.

Due to the album being begun pre-covid, this has been our most expensive album to date having had many delays due to the pandemic. It was recorded between two studios and had more people work on it than our previous releases due to the nature of the restrictions we were under during 2020-21. This has meant that not only has it had to be delayed multiple times (along with both EPs) we have had to continue to borrow money to cover the substantial losses from the recording process and had to borrow more money to fund the tour back in August.

We can only apologise for the delays and problems we have had with all three releases.  We have not been helped by a challenging economic situation coupled with a decline in the sale of physical media such as CDs with streaming overtaking the market, which brings in very little revenue compared to physical media.  

We are always very honest about our position and will continue to be. The band is in a significant amount of debt having survived Covid with no gigs and is trying to recover from that period and get all of the promised releases finished this year so we can move on to 2023 with a clean slate. There is no label funding this band, and no management behind it. We are working on this on our own.

AFTER EXTINCTION NOW AT 33,193 STREAMS FOLLOWING ALBUM RELEASE

10 Oct 2022 — Leave a comment

Our streams for the new album continue to grow as we have now broken over 33 thousand streams. We still do not have the full data from DistroKid, which covers many other stored but with what we do know it has been performing well so far.

After Bandcamp Friday we now have 88 pre-orders for the CD and 65 album downloads. We would very much like to improve this number in the coming weeks. The artwork is being finalised with the printers ready for printing this month.

  • YouTube: 25,037
  • Spotify: 3,045
  • Bandcamp: 2,472
  • Facebook: 2,639

Total: 33,193