KAINE TO RETURN TO REHEARSALS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2023 TODAY + EP UPDATE

We are back at Unit One Studios for the first time in 2023 today. We will be having a refresh session as well as working on our set for our gig at the Hot Box in Chelmsford on January 19th. You can buy tickets in advance from here and Band Backer Patreon’s can attend the gig for free by clicking here. The footage of today’s session will be uploaded onto YouTube next week.

Mixing and editing has been completed for the Extinction After EP. This EP includes 5 brand new songs, not on our most recent album, and was recorded by Wayne Thompson at Unit One Studio’s last year.

Once the final tracks go back, both Patreon CD releases will go to the printers alongside the Falling Through Freedom 10th anniversary patch and t-shirt. We are sorry about the delay. Once this is completed an announcement for the 2023 Patreon pack will be made, and this will be a very special release.

BAND BACKER PATREONS – FREE SHOW IN JANUARY!

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.

REHEARSALS RESUME AT UNIT ONE TODAY

We are back in Unit One today working on our set for 2023 and new music for our next album. We have had a busy week, having played our last gig of 2022 on Wednesday at Coda. We are now looking forward to our return to Chelmsford on January 19th at Hotbox. Hotbox is on the same road as the old Asylum venue, a venue Kaine played regularly in the past as well as out current line-up with their previous bands Cannon and Asylum. You can get tickets for the gig here.

KAINE TO PLAY FIRST CHELMSFORD GIG IN 3 YEARS THIS FRIDAY AT BASSMENT

We will be returning to Chelmsford for the first time since July 2019 this Friday, again at Bassment! We were once regulars in Chelmsford, having played everywhere from Saint Anne’s Castle, the Golden Fleece and even Wheatsheaf, to being a resident band at the former Asylum venue and we are very much looking forward to coming back.

One the line-up is Kursk who we have shared a number of bills with over the years, Obsesa and Radio Toxic. Tickets will be available on the door from 7pm. You can find more information here.

KAINE RETURN TO REHEARSALS TO PREPARE FOR IPSWICH + CHELMSFORD SHOWS AND AUGUST TOUR

Last weeks gig in Meldreth

We will be back in Unit One today for rehearsals. We have a busy few months lined up already with our recently announced gigs at The Rep in Ipswich, and Bassment Chelmsford on top of our August tour supporting Lillian Axe and Riot Act.

We will also have news on our brand new album in the coming weeks.

  • July 16th, 2022 – The Rep, Ipswich (buy tickets)
  • July 29th, 2022 – Bassment, Chelmsford (buy tickets)
  • August 22nd, 2022 – Robin 2, Wolverhampton (buy tickets)
  • August 23rd, 2022 – Trillian’s, Newcastle (buy tickets)
  • August 24th, 2022 – Nightrain, Bradford (buy tickets)
  • August 25th, 2022 – Bannermans, Edinburgh (buy tickets)
  • August 26th, 2022 – Hangar 18, Swansea (buy tickets)
  • August 27th, 2022 – Underworld, Camden, London (buy tickets)

KAINE RESUME NEW ALBUM SESSIONS TODAY FOLLOWING GIG CANCELLATION

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.

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

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.

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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 – Live [Releases tomorrow]

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Kaine are to release new live album tomorrow on CD and digital. The album will be available for a limited time only and much like the Ghost version of A Crisis of Faith, once it’s sold out there will be no more made available after.

A Crisis of Faith Live is the final release from the A Crisis of Faith line-up, recorded at the now closed Asylum venue in Chelmsford during 2017, featuring early versions of the songs on the then yet to be recorded A Crisis of Faith, including two additional tracks from The Waystone featuring the bands founding members in guest appearances.

To get 10% off the CD order, and the entire back catalogue for free on digital you can join as a Kaine member here in advance of the release. The 10% off will apply to all future orders and you will receive all albums for free digitally in the future. Elite buyers of A Crisis of Faith will receive the album on CD for free. Membership also includes items no longer for sale such as the original Kaine EP, Breaking the Surface Live, Killotine, Rock The Castle, Live at the Soundhouse, the Ghost tracks and more.

LEADING KAINE TO A CRISIS …. A CRISIS OF FAITH [PART 2]

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The “new” Kaine launched in 2016

So at the start of 2016, having already started work on songs such as Voice in Hell, Afterlife & Fall of Jericho, we returned to being a four-piece comprising of myself, now the sole original member on guitar and vocals, Chris MacKinnon, the only other guy to survive past The Waystone on drums and now sharing vocal duties taking over from Dan, Saxon Davids on lead guitar having joined us in 2014 and appeared on the Justice Injustice single and new boy Stephen Ellis on bass guitar.

As mentioned in my previous blog, the old band had essentially split up following Ant’s departure, my girlfriend had just left me and we had a month off gigging to work on new material, and that we did, we worked bloody hard. In addition to getting Fall of Jericho and Afterlife ready to be played and tested in a live setting, we also started playing a song Saxon wrote called Heavens Abandonment and one of my new songs, The Preacher Eyes around this time also, ready for our big return show at the Soundhouse, Colchester on the 5th of February. We were able to work on those songs and get them into the set in time for the show.

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Kaine at the Soundhouse

The show itself was a fun one, we had Daemona (Dan Mailer’s new band), Kill The Freak (featuring the soon to be famous Conor Ridd, of Freak fame, whose success would dwarf everyone else’s form the Underground music scene) and Myopic Empire (featuring two-time Kaine live drummer James Balcombe) on the bill which was a nice way to get back into playing live, with friends and adjust to being a four-piece again. The night went relatively well, we had a decent turnout and all the bands played great. We took to the stage and had a rough set by our standards, Chris played one of the new songs too fast so we turned that into a jam, we invited Dan up on stage to do Solidarity with us, in which I managed to break a string and had to quickly adapt the song to being a string down and I just sang lead vocals for the last song. It was a bumpy restart to Kaine, but we were on our way.

After that, we played a couple of shows that weren’t that great in terms of attendance but at that time this was good for us as we were finding our feet again. Over the next few months, we continued working on material, adding in a song that Stevo and Saxon came up with called A Night Meets Death into the set while reworking and tightening up the other new songs we had. We even played Wales for the first time, at a place called The Patriot in Crumlin.

Writing 2016

Writing the album in 2016

We survived mostly on our two residencies, one at The Soundhouse in Colchester and the Rock Den in Hatfield alongside our regular gigs at Asylum in Chelmsford. We were able to rebuild the reputation of the band at these gigs and show people that we were alive and well despite the line-up changes. People were also starting to recognise the difference in the band’s sound coming from the new material and people were really enjoying the new material.

Outside of those residencies, we were still playing all over, however, there were a few stinkers up and down the road still. Our first gig in Bolton at the Alma was pretty fun, we took a pilgrimage to the Fred Dibnah statue, a legendary British steeplejack, engineer and Victorian historian from the town, and it was our first time meeting Twisted Illusion, a band we would go on to become friends with, so much so, Stevo ended up playing bass on their album Insight to the Mind of a Million Faces, which would see them featured in Classic Rock magazine and at Bloodstock festival in the UK.

Bolton is a bit of an odd place in that, not only was the fish shop too posh for us to eat in, it had Butlers, but there was a shop that only sold settees and phone cases. I still don’t understand that.

Tour Van

Saxon and the Tour Van

We also had in the works our first standalone tour, in Scotland. We had first played Scotland back in 2014 on both the Renegades tour and Mordred’s Britain and Ireland tour, we were then subsequently booked to play Wildfire Festival in 2015, and our performance at that show had been so strong we had been nominated for an award for it, and thus had built up a following in Scotland. Being plagued with messages and e-mails asking for our return, we decided we would head up for a three-date tour to test the waters. We would hit Perth, Glasgow and Edinburgh over a weekend. Vauxhall were kind enough to endorse our tour and given us the van for free. Alex Smith also joined us as tour manager and roadie. The tour was a success in some ways, we had a decent turnout all three nights and a lot of fun but also lost money due to the promotional side of things, but we hadn’t run it as a money-making exercise, just to see if we could tour alone and draw an audience.

Alex

Alex, selling our merch on the Scotland Tour

One night the guys got pissed up in Dave Ritchie’s house (he runs Wildfire and kindly allowed us to stay). Stevo got to the point where he couldn’t walk so I had to physically pick him up and carry him to bed and Alex managed to keep me up snoring anyway, it even woke Chris up who lobbed his shoes at him to no avail.

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Live in Scotland 2016

The next night we played in Edinburgh, the guys feeling like crap from the drink and lack of sleep. I don’t drink, but suffered as a consequence of them keeping me up all night. We played Bannermans next, which is a great little venue. We were lucky enough to be able to stay in the flat upstairs, however, Matt Denny (Mordred’s UK Tour manager, who had come to see us) had pointed out it was haunted. Chris then didn’t sleep all night, and instead stayed awake in a paranoid state. I slept fine, which was surprising as I shared the same room as Alex who normally snores like a freight train at the best of times. Chris, being one of the drivers along with Stevo then had to drive home in a tired state.

We released a recording of a set from one of our August shows at the Soundhouse, which was recorded accidently by Myopic Empire for free download on the 12th of that same month which can be downloaded from here.

This would turn out to be our last ever show at the venue, we did have one further date as part of our residency but the new venue owners, after complaining about us taking a share of the bar fee to pay for promotional costs, cancelled our November date without informing us. They later claimed to others they didn’t know about the date, despite talking about it with us on the night while they advised us they wouldn’t be offering a bar split in future, to which we informed them that we wouldnt be paying for promotion out of our own pocket. It’s their loss ultimately as our shows there were always well attended and the venue did make money on those nights. This is typical of the short sightedness of a lot of venue owners, many of which will spend nothing on promotion, complain about paying bands and be equally upset when turnout is poor.

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After our set at Mearfest 2016

The next big gig we did in 2016 was Mearfest at the Borderline in London. The turnout was incredible and the bands were great. Mearfest is a charity New Wave of British Heavy Metal festival, which raises money for good causes run by Brian and Claire Mear. They had sadly lost their daughter Molly, who had been born stillborn and the event was in aid of a stillbirth clinic that provides support for parents who have gone through such a traumatic experience. They very much view it as turning a tragedy into a positive and it was an honour to support that event. A year later Claire would give birth to her daughter Amelie.

Throughout the year we would introduce yet more songs into the set, after writing, rehearsing, and working them intensely. They would be songs such as Alone and A Crisis of Faith which I had written, Frailty of the Blade, one of Stevo’s songs which was originally a song called Stephens song about rape culture by a band called Drop Dead Fred that Chris and Stevo had played in, which we reworked into a Kaine song and finally The Mind is Willing, another song by Chris and the first tone he performed lead vocals on. Another song was written by Stevo around this time called Consigned To Flames of Woe, which didn’t wind up on this album and he also wrote an intro piece for Heaven’s Abandonment.

We would continue to change and adapt the songs live, both musically and lyrically to further improve them, which is why we were playing the material before the album was out. It’s how Black Sabbath wrote a lot of their early material, and how Iron Maiden did most of their first two albums and it was clearly something we also greatly benefitted from.

Later in the year we had a few more great shows up and down the country, we headlined a packed out Portland Arms in Cambridge, which I think was the first show we ever played Alone at, where the audience was absolutely mental and mosh pits galore.

holding-the-line

In November we were made aware that the Asylum venue in Chelmsford needed to raise around £12k very quickly to remain open. The Asylum, being the best place to play as a Metal band in Chelmsford, and a cause close to us in the band is very important to us. We decided we would write and record a song to help raise money for the venue, which became Holding The Line, one Sunday I wrote the majority of the music and the lyrics, we rehearsed it on the Thursday and then recorded it live on Sunday the 20th of November. We were kindly offered the studio time free of charge by Ade Hare (Producer Falling Through Freedom & Justice Injustice) at Threecircles to help support the venue, who recorded and mixed the track and Z-Plane (mastering on The Waystone, Justice Injustice and Falling Through Freedom) mastered the track, also for free. Over 200 copies of the single were sold, with every penny going to the venue.

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We rounded off the year back in Ipswich at the Swan, again a packed show where the audience was absolutely fantastic. I hope you have enjoyed the part two on how A Crisis of Faith came into existence and I will try and write part three at a later point.

Love, as ever…. Rage

Kaine record exclusive single – ambition is to raise £12,000 to save Asylum music venue in Chelmsford

Kaine yesterday recorded an exclusive single to help raise £12,000 to save the Asylum music venue in Chelmsford. The studio time was donated by Threecircles Recording Studio to help support the campaign to save the venue.

Kaine is hoping a wide social reach will help raise the profile of the single in the short amount of time needed to save the venue. The single will be priced at just £1.

The release is imminent.

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