For those Patreon’s paying for the band-backer tier, we will reimburse the price of any tickets for our gig later this month at Hot Box, Chelmsford (January 19th at 7pm).
If you have purchased tickets for the event in advance, please send the email proof of purchase to bookings@kaine-metal.com and we will refund you the cost of all tickets (including those for friends) purchased for the event after the show takes place.If you purchase a ticket on the door, please come and see us on the night to have the reimbursement arranged. You can buy tickets here: https://link.dice.fm/A83d17889155
If you wish to become a Kaine band-backer please click 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.
Kaine have booked in some last minute album recording sessions, this time with Gallow Wood Media to start working on the vocal tracking for the album following their gig cancellation today. Kaine were due to play an NWOBHM event at the Queens Hall, Nuneaton which fell through due to poor ticket sales, the second time the event has been cancelled.
Kaine will start the vocal tracking with Talon Payne of Gallow Wood Media, the band worked with Talon on their most recent EP as well as the definitive edition of Reforge The Steel, The Waystone EP and the Reforge The Steel and Kaine X live albums from 2019.
Our first gig was on May 26th 2018. It was one of our regular shows there as I had booked a reasonably busy schedule that year to help promote A Crisis of Faith. We arrived at the venue early and were chatting outside prior to load in when Dan Mailer and Josh Birch arrived together (from Osmium Guillotine) pulling up in the carpark, I had a half empty bottle of Coca-Cola which I was able to throw through the passenger window, past Josh’s head and straight into Dan’s face as he pulled up. Dan, looking for revenge, jumped out of his car and came charging up the B2 steps towards me, having forgot to put his handbrake on, turning to see Josh and his car going for unplanned trip into the Brickmakers beer garden!
From one of the early shows in Camden
The other amusing moment from that gig was the late great Wayne MacConnachie had arrived with Peter Keliris for the gig, he looked at me, looked at the guys and said “where’s ya band” obviously having not heard the news, I said to him that this was the band, he looked at me, looked at them “your fucking joking aren’t you?” I said the others had left the band and he was gobsmacked “they left you? They all left you? They all fucking left you?!”. Wayne simply couldn’t believe the last line up had left! That was sadly the last time I saw Wayne alive and were informed of his passing on the way to the Reforge The Steel Live recording gig in November 2019. We played a tribute to Wayne alongside Osmium Guillotine and Walk in Coma in January 2020 in Braintree.
Gent aka local legend Andy Martin opened the night, and Osmium Guillotine obviously also played. Dan Mailer jumped on on stage with us for the encore and all in all it was a successful first gig with very few mistakes. I think we genuinely shocked a few people. The band was formed in a fortnight and was already playing live, and to a good level, the transition seamless from the previous line-up.
An early B2 Show
Our next gig was a charity event in Long Melford, famous for being the place the legendary Hellfire Club was founded and much of the local folklore surrounds nefarious activities by the local nobles at Melford Hall. It is also famous for Beatrix Potter having stayed there. The gig itself was for our friend Bonnie Kelly’s fathers best friends memorial – Bonnie has her own band New Pages which can be checked out here. Toby and Isaac had to perform double duty as Cannon were also on the bill. Chris MacKinnon was also doing sound that night, obviously unable to stay away from us! After that we played the Unicorn in Camden for the first time. We would play a few gigs there in 2018 which were all really good, but weirdly after that we were never invited back! Kaine actually hadn’t played the gig since 2013 when we supported Canadian Metal legends Striker there! Again the gig went well and the band started to gel on stage.
After that we played with Alter the Sky at the Blue Moon, Cambridge. This is another venue we used to play a lot back in the day when it was the Man on the Moon, we even had a residency there for a bit in 2013. Again the show went incredibly well and people struggled to believe that this was a brand new band. We also started playing songs from Reforge The Steel around this time in the set as well. We were literally rehearsing, learning the Crisis material and adding new material into the set as well which really helped progress the Reforge The Steel album quickly.
Our one and only appearance at The Rock Den!
It was in this period that I wrote the 8 tracks for Reforge The Steel at home. I decided that to prove the band wasn’t dead and this band was as good as ever, I had to get a new album out as quickly as possible. I wrote Reforge The Steel, Black and Rebirth first, Wake was a song and I and Saxon Davids started working on some years previous that we even played live in instrumental form toward the back end of 2017, and songs like Master of Mankind and In Cold Light were written later with Loudwire being the last one I think I wrote for that album. It was important to show the world that we were still going and that is why Reforge The Steel came out so soon after A Crisis of Faith. We just learned the new songs between the Crisis material, and then played them live to iron out the cracks. It was a very busy period for the band. I had also started a new job around that time, which was less all over the place then the warehouse work but infinitely more stressful!
We had another gig at the B2 in July. Anthony Murch joined us for a few songs that night and a solo trade-off on stage, which I part inspired the ending of Master of Mankind! As Ant arrived the venue I was able to sneak around his car with a traffic cone, and block his door off so he couldn’t get out of his car! Is it any wonder people leave my band….Having looked back at the dates we had a very busy 2018! We were back at the Unicorn that month and also played our first and only gig at The Rock Den in Hatfield, another venue we’d previously been a resident band at.
Adam’s old band Cardinal
At the end of July we played Swanfest at the Swan, Ipswich in what was one of the hottest gigs I have ever played. Long term band friend Adam Prowse (who had played bass in Cardinal) joined us for the encore on vocals. The Swan is famous for having Ed Sheeran play there before he was famous. Ed recently having sponsored Ipswich Town Football Club, my football team and is famous for other things, but for me that’s the most important! Much like me he’s a regular at Town games, but at least he has a successful musical career to drown out the misery! It’s good to see him plough some money into the club under the new owners, but having said that if the club dropped any lower then I could have probably afforded to buy it, let alone sponsor it!
From The Smokehouse, Ipswich
So I thought I would give a little detail on our early gigs as a band. It’s weird to think this was all three years ago now. I will cover the back end of 2018 and the start of the recording of Reforge The Steel next week.
A Crisis of Faith Live has finally sold out on CD. The band will not be reprinting any more of these and the digital version of the album will become a members only release on Bandcamp which can be accessed here. The album was recorded live at the Asylum Chelmsford by Short Stack studios and features the A Crisis of Faith album in full and includes two tracks from The Waystone that features founding members of the band Dan Mailer and Josh Moreton.
The bands 4th album Reforge The Steel is close to selling out on CD with only 2 copies remaining to buy. The band will be issuing a new CD later this year for the album which, following feedback from The Waystone EP, will feature a remix with the inclusion of additional backing vocals and some alternate versions of songs from the original album. The CD package itself will also be different from the original release and the full details about the new version of the album will be announced at a later point.
The backing vocals were recorded by Talon Payne at Gallow Wood Media on October 3rd and feature Liam Etheridge, Toby Woods and Talon Payne. You can see the sessions on the video link above.
You can still order the original album while stocks last by clicking here.
Kaine will resume their new album writing and rehearsal sessions tomorrow at Pioneer Music in Colchester. Last week the band worked on 6 new songs from the album, two of which were newer additions and the other four had been worked on in previous weeks.
Today the band will be working with Talon Payne again at Gallow Wood Media in Danbury on a soon to be announced release. Kaine worked with Talon previously as he recorded both Kaine X and Reforge The Steel Live with the band as well as recently recording some of the vocals for The Waystone EP. Talon also provided some of the backing vocals himself to the EP.
In addition to their Sunday session at Pioneer Music, Colchester this week the band will be heading to Gallowood Media in Danbury, Essex for a recording sessions tomorrow.
The band has recorded there previously for the recent Waystone EP, and have also worked with engineer Talon Payne (who also provided backing vocals on the EP) on the Kaine X and Reforge The Steel live albums.
Liam Etheridge has now been the drummer in Kaine for 2 years, originally replacing Chris MacKinnon in what was essentially the Crisis of Faith line-up before the band was reformed a month later. He played his first gig with Kaine at The Dev on the 20th of April 2018 and would only play 1 more gig with that line-up (May 4th 2018 at Voodoo Lounge, Stamford) before one final transitional gig with Toby Woods on lead guitar and Stephen Ellis on bass at The Smokehouse, Ipswich on May 19th.
Liam has since recorded and released the Reforge The Steel album with the band, as well as appearing on the Kaine X Live album and DVD. He has also performed drums on the delayed Waystone EP and Reforge The Steel live album. Both projects are on hold due to corona virus and the UK lock down measures.
Today’s feature is Kaine bassist Isaac Healy, the last person to join the new line-up as the four members finally came together in May 2018. Isaac jumped in right away with the band gigging the A Crisis of Faith material while writing and rehearsing for the new album, Reforge The Steel.
How long have you been playing bass?
I’ve been playing for around 7 or 8 years
You are a multi-instrumentalist, you play drums, what made you switch to bass as your main instrument and what other instruments can you play?
I switched to bass as my main instrument mainly out of convenience of being able to practice easier and at any time.
I actually started out learning classical guitar at primary school and started learning the drums shortly after. Over the years, I never really practiced the guitar as much as I should have but have recently been re-teaching myself.
At The Firehouse, Southampton
You have several basses in your collection, what do you own and what are your current set ups?
Listing all 17 would take a while so my top 5 in no particular order are:
Atelier Z M265+ custom (the white 5 string jazz bass that I play at most gigs)
Atelier Z Beta 6/32 (Red 6 string jazz bass that I played at my first Kaine gig and sporadically since)
ESP PPJ (’84 signature bass of Masayoshi Yamashita from Loudness)
1970s Ovation Magnum 1
2010 Fender Mexican Jazz (my first “real” bass. It was originally black but I had it re-finished in yellow. I promise it isn’t as nasty as it sounds)
Live in Bury St Edmund’s
What amps and pedals are you currently using?
I use 3 main amps depending on situation but will mostly have 2 with me. The first is the Trace Elliot ELF which lives in my gig bag as a backup amp or as the main amp if a normal amp is impractical logistics wise. Second is an Ashdown CTM 100 tube amp. My third and most recent amp is an ENGL Ironbass amp which is the most powerful amp I own by far at 800w.
My pedal board is too large, and I plan on downsizing by getting rid of the multi effect that takes up 1/2 of my board.
My pedals are actually mostly really boring. Line 6 G30 wireless, Boss TU-3 tuner, AMT bass wah, Electro Harmonix Bass Preacher compressor, Ashdown Nate Mendel NM2 dual overdrive.
Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, the man who helped invent music… everything before Sabbath was merely tuning up…
Who are your biggest influences as a bass player?
Probably Billy Sheehan (Mr Big, etc.), Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath), Rocco Prestia (Tower of Power) and Bohte Daisuke (Kari Band).
At the Bassment, Chelmsford
What were your musical endeavours before Kaine?
I had only really been in one gigging band before Kaine which was called Cannon. I was in another band in secondary school, but we never did any real gigs.
The now closed Asylum venue in Chelmsford
You played with Toby in a band called Cannon, how long have you known and played with Toby, what did you release and what venues did you play with that band?
I’ve known Toby for about 5 years as we were on the same music course and we actually met in Cannon which somebody else on our course put together. In Cannon we played a few venues that you would maybe heard of if you’re from Essex such as Chinnery’s in Southend, the Asylum and Three Wise Monkeys.
Earlier this year at Colchester Arts Centre
Toby recommended you to Kaine to join the band, how was it to be in a new band and gigging so quickly?
I hadn’t actually heard of Kaine until Toby asked if I wanted to join. At the time Cannon was winding down due to constant lineup changes so it was good to be in a band that already had gigs on the books.
Rocking out at The Dome, London
How did you find adapting the A Crisis of Faith songs to your style?
As I had learnt most of the songs by ear, something that I am definitely not the best at, and the fact that I didn’t already know the songs meant that I was sort of just winging it for most of the parts that were very Stevo. Most of which I just omitted or changed. (nothing against Stevo, I think he’s a much more melodic player than I and we have pretty different styles).
From the Reforge The Steel photoshoot
You put together the Reforge The Steel album very quickly, how was the process of rehearsing and recording that album for you?
The recording of that album was pretty easy for me, I managed to do all of my tracking in about half a day.
Tracking the EP earlier this year
You also recently tracked your parts for The Waystone EP, how did you find that?
I found that The Waystone songs were quite a bit different to the Reforge tracks, especially the title track The Waystone. That track was much unlike the other tracks we had done, mainly due to how it was almost prog like in structure when compared to the rest of the material.
At Burr Fest 2020
You played both the 10-year show with Kaine at Colchester Arts Centre, and Burr Fest at The Dome recently, what was it like doing those big gigs with the band?
Doing these two gigs was a great experience and not just because they were in the minority of gigs where I could hear what I was playing. These two gigs were two of the biggest crowds I have played for and two of the most engaged crowds to boot. That just made it even more fun to play in front of them.
Isaac at Kaine X
Your currently writing material for a new Kaine album, how would you describe the new material so far and the process?
So far, this album seems to be shaping up to be quite a bit different to the previous albums sound wise. The process so far has mainly been just jamming a riff or two and seeing how it evolves.
From Kaine X Live
How are you managing your time during the lock down?
Either practicing bass or just playing video games.
Isaac ranks the A27M “Cromwell” as the best tank fielded in the Second World War
You are also releasing a new live album coming up, which was recorded at the B2 Norwich, are you looking forward to putting out a live version of the Reforge The Steel album?
Yes.
Reforge The Steel!
Finally, what is your thought of the day?
Can animals have the equivalent of an accent?
You can hear Isaac’s contributions to Kaine on Reforge The Steel by clicking here – there are still a number of CD’s available to order through Bandcamp. Isaac also performed at Kaine X which can be ordered both on CD and DVD by clicking here as well as the forthcoming Waystone EP which can be preordered here.
