Blog

It’s good to be back! – First Blog of 2019

27 Jan 2019 — Leave a comment

I thought I would write another blog following last nights gig at CALMival in Chelmsford. CALMival is Charity music festival with the aim of helping raise crucial funds and awareness for Mental Health and for Award-winning Mental Health Charity “CALM” (Campaign Against Living Miserably – The CALMzone). CALM is dedicated to preventing male suicide, the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the UK. The event itself raised over £500 for the charity.

We were on last, which is always a challenge at an all dayer as many people get fatigue from listening to music all day, and with mixed genre lineups it’s always tough to keep all the audience on board as your music might not appeal to a certain section of the crowd. However, in this case the majority did stay and watch us at the end of the night, and the atmosphere throughout was friendly and fun and the perfect gig to return to. I really enjoyed myself and you can see us playing last night in the clip above.

We haven’t played a gig ourselves for over a month, since our show in Birmingham back in December. It worked out timing wise to have the break as I’d become quite unwell with a flu that just wouldn’t leave me no matter what! I am still suffering with some of the effects of it, but I am over the worse. We’d still been rehearsing hard since that gig and putting a lot of time into getting the set tight as well as making sure we’re still in good playing shape ready to record the guitars and bass for the new Kaine album.

It was good to be back on stage again and playing both songs from the new album and A Crisis of Faith, and as I said I really enjoyed last night and am looking forward to playing again in March this time with Satan’s Empire at the Cart & Horses in London.

arts centre

While we haven’t been gigging, we have been working really hard to push the 10 Years of Kaine show in April – we’re close to 25% of the capacity sold so far but we’re hoping to do even better than that come the night itself. The t-shirts of the show are being printed as I write this and will be available soon, and free to those who have purchased VIP tickets for the event. We’ve been putting up posters, posting flyers, promoting posts, running competitions and sending emails to help drive up attendance. The email we sent last week to 400 people who had bought Kaine merch from our bandcamp in the past, only 100 of which actually opened the email and not one of those clicked on the buy tickets link! That’s just an example of how hard it is to get people to engage online with the band, Facebook these days is hopeless, so we’ve had to branch out to try and find new ways to market ourselves. We’ll be doing a mailshot soon so those same people will get a flyer in the post. It’s our biggest ever self-promoted show so we must do everything we can to bring people out.

We’re going to resume the recording of the new album next month, however in the meantime the German version of the A Crisis of Faith album, which is being released in Europe through Underground Power Records, will be available soon. There will be exclusive artwork on this version of the album and a limited number will be available to purchase from us in the U.K.

As ever, thank you for taking the time to read this blog.

Love

Rage

A Crisis Of Faith – Blog 1

1 May 2018 — Leave a comment

RSB

I thought I would post a blog update about what’s going on with Kaine right now. As many know we’ve just released our brand-new album A Crisis of Faith which has received many positive reviews so far and it’s been great seeing everyone’s responses to the album.

We’ve also undergone a bit of an abrupt change, with our former Drummer Chris having to depart to give his full concentration to working in the wider music industry. Of course, with every change in band comes a transitional period, but Liam Etheridge joined us on drums within a week of Chris departing making for a smoother transition than many would have expected, and after just a couple of rehearsals he debuted with us a The Dev in Camden.

May 4th Stamford Poster.png

Liam had his third session last week and has come on leaps already, becoming tight with the band and already getting a stronger grip on the new album songs, including Frailty of the Blade and Behind the Preacher’s Eyes. We’re hoping to do Frailty of the Blade on Friday when we join Black Hawk Down, Synthetic and the Mutations at Mama Liz’s in Stamford, downstairs in the Voodoo Lounge on Friday. The venue is one of the best small venues in the country with an exceptional sound engineer, Tony, who takes the time and effort to ensure every band gets world class sound.

As with everything, working with a new band takes time to iron out all of the creases, get to know the personalities and the new dynamics on the collective. It’s as much a bonding experience as anything else. I have had to do it several times with Kaine, when Josh left it was a huge blow but we found Chris and they are very different drummers and personalities and that naturally took time to adjust to, the same when Dan left, as Dan had been not only the bassist but the joint singer and worked very closely with me since the formation of the band and that was a big adjustment for me to be working without him, but Stevo came in, again a totally different player to Dan, and grew in confidence to be considered one of the best bassists and showman on the scene today but with Stevo we had the advantage of him and Chris being a successful team in their former band (Drop Dead Fred, which evolved to become Memory Boy) making that transition a smooth one.

As for Ants departure, it was slightly different as Saxon had already joined the band while Anthony was still with us when we became a 5 piece, and a tri-guitar nightmare for soundmen, but for me it was a weird adjustment to make working without him for the first few months because we’d played together since the first album.

In terms of Liam, he’s done exceptionally well so far. I had even spoken to Chris about his progress, and Chris remarked that he saw a lot of his early self in Liam which is as big a compliment as anyone can give. Change happens with bands, the likeliness of keeping one line-up together and carrying on for years is increasingly less possible, so one of the things you have to be able to do is adjust to as a musician is playing with different people and be open to people playing their interpretations of the songs rather than stick to rigid formulas.

ACOFMail

In terms of the album, we only have roughly 25 remaining on CD, we’re currently working on getting the LP version mastered with Pointy Halo Productions and I am drafting the artwork and sleeves and confirm it will be a colour vinyl this time, but the price should remain the same as before. I am also working on mixing the live album, recorded last year at the Asylum, which will be the last release with the old line-up and features founding members Josh Moreton (drums) and Dan Mailer (vocals). Both items will be free to everyone who ordered the Elite version of the album.

There is some positives news on the horizon as well, I and Stevo have been particularly busy working on songs for the fourth Kaine album to the point of having 12 between us almost ready to rehearse for the new record, Liam is working on a track too and Saxon has several ideas he’s about to put together into songs and join myself to work some of those into tracks I have written. There’s going to be plenty of great material for the fourth album, some of it is very different to our last and I like to think we’ve evolved the sound with every release anyway.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this blog and for your continued support of the band.

Love, Rage