This week we have finally finished mixing the Reforged in Extinction live album with Talon Payne at Gallow Wood Media. The CD release will be ready soon, along with a Patreon exclusive video of the event. The album was recorded at the band’s five-year anniversary celebration of the current lineup of Rage Sadler, Liam Etheridge, Toby Woods, and Isaac Healy coming together in May 2018. The album contains a selection of songs from both Reforge The Steel and After Extinction, as well as one track from the Extinction After EP. This was recorded at Three Wise Monkeys, Colchester, earlier this year. You can pre-order the new live album here.
I thought I would take a moment to thank everyone who came out and supported our event at Three Wise Monkeys, Colchester on Friday.
We were celebrating the 5th anniversary of this line-up of Kaine coming together and the event was a huge success thanks to your support. We sold out the venue while competing with Blur at Colchester Arts Centre, and Bloodstock’s Metal to the Masses happening just a few doors down. This is a big achievement for us, and we hope to be back at some point after our tour supporting Chris Holmes (of W.A.S.P fame), and after I have had my shoulder surgery later this year.
Over the years we have been consistently told the scene is dead, nobody comes out and supports live Heavy Metal music unless it’s Metallica or Iron Maiden anymore, and there is no point in running gigs in places such as Colchester. As ever, Friday has again proven those people wrong. We will continue to prove them wrong and work hard to promote our events, Heavy Metal is alive and well, and the scene is thriving in the UK underground.
We recorded the set for a forthcoming live album, as well as having the footage recorded for YouTube and other streaming services to be uploaded at a later date.
The live-album track listing is:
Bright
Reforge The Steel
A Slave to the Grind
Black
Second Coming (The Cycle)
Loudwire
After Extinction
The Dragon Reborn (Rebirth)
Protesting for Profit
I am God, The Master of Mankind
Green to Grey
All Hail the Evil One
Unlike the previous live albums, which were crudely mixed and produced by myself, this release will be getting produced by Talon Payne of Gallow Wood Media, rather than a DIY release, and therefore will have top-quality production. The tracks were a mixture from both albums (Reforge The Steel/After Extinction) as well as the first-ever performance of All Hail the Evil One from the Extinction After EP.
After Extinction is proving to be our most popular album yet, breaking streaming records for the band. Since releasing our album in September, it has been streamed 171,499 times. YouTube has been by far the most popular place to stream the album, with Spotify in a distant second and Bandcamp in third. You can see the full store breakdown below:
YouTube: 79,405
All Others: 77,173
Spotify: 7,044
Bandcamp: 4,072
Facebook: 2,941
Apple Music: 503
Amazon: 251
Deezer: 110
Total: 171,499
Streaming income: £55.02
As you can see, while the numbers of streams across all platforms are relatively high, the actual income associated with the streaming amounts to less than four CD sales. You can order the Super Jewel cased CD from here.
We will be working at Gallow Wood Media with Talon Payne this morning for our first music video for the new album After Extinction. This will be the second music video the band has done, the last being in 2018 for the A Crisis of Faith album. Joining us will be Heidi Crowell who will be performing her keys/vocals from the album.
The music video will be released alongside a new single, which will be a new version of the track from the album for which the video is for.
After shooting is completed, we will head over to Unit One Studios for our rehearsals to prepare for our gig at the Hotbox in Chelmsford next week. You can get tickets for the event here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
