Our tour with Riot Act kicks off in just two weeks time. Riot Act will be heading over to England for a short run of dates ahead of their festival appearance at British Steel in France. They will be playing the entirety of Riot’s Fire Down Under album. You can still grab tickets for the tour from here.
We will be ensuring we are in the best playing shape possible and working hard at Unit One Studios today on our tour set. We took a break from rehearsals last week to take the above photographs with Rachel W Photography. These were taken to help further promote the tour dates.
Today we’ll be visiting locations for the tour to take promotional pictures with Rachel W Photography. This is part of our final push to promote our forthcoming shows with Riot Act, coming from New York. We hope the more localised imagery will encourage more Rock and Metal fans in those areas to back the tour by buying tickets. We are absolutely determined to make this a success and are working hard to sell out every show.
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.
After yesterday’s Mearfest appearance at The Queens Hall, Nuneaton, we are back to rehearsal today. The focus today will be preparation for the forthcoming tour with Riot Act. Riot Act will be playing the entirety of the legendary Riot album Fire Down Under on this tour, and we’re really looking forward to hitting the road with them later this month. We are aiming to be in top playing condition for these shows!
Mearfest went well for us also, many thanks to Stevo for jumping on and filling in for Isaac yesterday. We think we got away with it! This was Stevo’s first appearance with the band for 5 years, and he had never played any of these songs live with us before, so we are thankful for his efforts to learn the music and help us out with this one.
All t-shirts and CDs for the 2022 pack have now been sent out. The patches have been printed and will be sent our ASAP. Once these have been sent out, we’ll announce our 2023 package. This will be a new shirt design, new patch, and new CD release.
Band backers will also receive two additional shirts, the Second Coming shirt, and the Extinction England shirts. If Band backers have already ordered these shirts, we will offer a selection of made to order designs for you to select from instead. You can join the band backer tier here. Band Backers will also received the new live album for free, or if they have already ordered an equivalent release they do not own.
We have lost 41 Patreon’s in recent weeks, which is an equivalent of £1,476 a year (lowest tier) income for the band. We understand that packs have been slow getting out, but we had two unexpected tours this year (which Patreon helped fund), and it takes a while for us to get designs made, shirts printed, and music recorded and mixed. If you have cancelled your membership, we ask you to reconsider and re-join us by clicking here.
Every penny goes back into the band and helps us continue, we have no label support, no management and we are entirely self-funded. Rehearsals alone cost £36 (plus fuel) a week, gigs are largely petrol money only and we rely purely on merch sales to continue to afford to play live.
We will be having a bumper rehearsal session today at Unit One Studios ahead of Mearfest next week. Isaac Healy is now unable to do the show because of work commitments, so former bassist Stephen Ellis will be stepping in for the show and has been learning the band’s new set this week. Mearfest is the first Kaine gig since our return from the Chris Holmes Mean Man Tour in June.
The new Extinction England shirts will also be available to purchase at Mearfest. These will be £20 on the day, or if ordered in advance from Bandcamp just £15 from here.
Former Kaine bassist Stephen Ellis will make a return to the band for the forthcoming Mearfest performance in Nuneaton at the Queen’s Hall.
Current bassist Isaac Healy is now unable to make the show due to work commitments. Stevo was originally pencilled in to play guitar for Kaine at this event, as it was expected that Rage Sadler would be going undergoing surgery for calcific tendonitis and chronic bursitis in his shoulder in July, this would have meant Rage would not be able to play guitar at Mearfest Flame.
This surgery has been pushed back meaning Stevo was stood down from covering on guitar, however, this has fortunately made it possible for him to step in for Isaac on bass instead. This will be Stevo’s first performance with Kaine in 4 years, the last being the tenth-anniversary show in 2019, where the A Crisis of Faith line-up performed together for the very last time. Stevo’s run with the band was between 2015-2018, and he appears on the A Crisis of Faith album. He has also performed in other acts such as Drop-Dead Fred and Mercury Rising.
The line-up of Rage, Liam, Toby, and Stevo has performed together once before, back in May 2018 at The Smokehouse Ipswich, alongside Scream Serenity and Vice, this was during a transitional period when Isaac was still learning the set with the band.
Stevo is learning the bands current set, and the group will be rehearsing together at Unit One, this forthcoming Bank Holiday Monday.
We will be preparing for Mearfest today, which takes place on the 2nd of September. This will be our first gig since the Chris Holmes tour, so we’re excited about getting out there and playing again.
Mearfest has always been a very special occasion for this band, in fact, the “Crisis” era of the band played Mearfest twice back in the day, the first time at the Borderline in London and the second at the Carlisle in Hastings. This will be the 14th Mearfest show held in total. This year is Mearfest Flame, at the Queen’s Hall in Nuneaton. This is of particular significance to me as to be frank, I wasn’t even supposed to be playing guitar at this event. I have a case of chronic bursitis and calcific tendonitis, something I have fought with for close to a decade now which now requires surgery. I was due to be operated on in July however this has now been delayed until later this year (hopefully). I am now available to play the event (and subsequent tour) whereas we had drafted in an ex-member to cover for me for this show, who has now been stood down.
Mearfest Flame not only features us, but bands you may know, another East Anglian band called Hedra who are based out of Norwich, you have another band from the new era called Chemikill, General Jack who are new to us, NWOBHM legends in Quartz, Troyen, and Desolation Angels as well as Stormchild who were originally formed in 1979. The Queens Hall is a fantastic venue, we played there twice back in the day in 2011 and 2013, as well as playing the second stage there (the Crew) more recently with Kev Riddles Baphomet in 2022. This will be our only show before the Fire Down Under Tour with Riot Act, and our last midlands show for 2023, so we hope to see you there.
I hope to see as many of you at the show as possible. Today is our first rehearsal in a few weeks as Liam buggered off to Bloodstock! I am looking forward to getting back to work today!
We are back in Unit One today to prepare for the forthcoming shows at Mearfest and our tour coming up with Riot Act. We have been working hard t be in top playing shape for these shows and the hard work continues today.
You can catch us at:
September 2nd, 2023 – Mearfest Flame Festival, The Queens Hall, Nuneaton (Buy Tickets)
The new Falling Through Freedom t-shirts are being printed and sent out over the coming weeks, the patches will arrive later, which will mean everything is all caught up for 2021-22 before we can announce the next package. We are sorry for the delay in getting everything out this time, it has been a mammoth amount of recording, printing, and posting!
We’ve been working hard to push the FIRE DOWN UNDER tour with Riot Act. We are in effect the promoters of these events, so it’s on us to make these shows a success. We’ve booked venues we know are good in areas we know we can usually get decent crowds. Riot Act is coming from New York to do this tour, and we’re hoping to sell out all these shows for them when they are over. We’ve priced the advance tickets at just £8 to make it as affordable as possible. If you are yet to buy a ticket, you can do it from here: https://www.firedownundertour.co.uk/category/tour-tickets
