To round off a busy week, we’ll be shooting a new music video with Talon Payne of Gallow Wood media next Sunday. This will be another track from our brand new album After Extinction. You can watch the first video produce from the album on the link above.
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:
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.
Our brand new music video has broken 45k plays on YouTube! This has been achieved through a number of promotional campaigns through Google Ads and Meta promotions.
Our new music video for Green to Grey from the album After Extinction has broken over 43 thousand views since its launch on Friday. This has been achieved through a number of Google Ads (which make up 91.6% of the views) and a Facebook advert campaign, both being run simultaneously which we will be doing and adjusting on an ongoing basis. So far, while the campaign has generated a lot of views, with over 500 people checking out the Bandcamp from the video, a 159 people subscribing to the channel however this is yet to transfer to a single sale of the album.
We launched the video on Friday to help promote the band’s new album After Extinction. We have taken advice recently, and we were told while our music was very good, we were losing out by not having a visual component or message to go alongside it, and thus we were losing out on much of the audience as a result.
Over the last few months, we have been experimenting with Google Adverts and learning how that could work as part of a marketing strategy. We have since set up an ongoing campaign alongside the video launch which has seen over 35k people watch the video, 500 clicks through to the Bandcamp (although no sales at this stage), and 100 new YouTube subscribers. So far, we have found that the reach is much more effective than Facebook/Instagram marketing, but we will continue to experiment with all forms of promotion.
Please check out the video on the link above or here, and like/subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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.
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.
Rage will be heading to Gallow Wood Media to record the vocals for the Falling Through Freedom EP. The EP will be a Patreon exclusive on CD and will be part of a multi-disc set to celebrate 10 years of the album release. The release will contain 5 tracks with two songs which were left off the original album. This will hopefully be the last recording session for the EP, which will mean the EP can then be edited, mixed and mastered before release. The CD ill have new artwork, as will the 2022 Patreon shirt. You can grab yours by joining Patreon for £3 or more a month here.
On Friday the drums were recorded for the Falling Through Freedom EP. The EP which will be released as part of a Patreon exclusive set to celebrate 10 years of the debut album, will contain new artwork and two songs not on the original album, and three songs from the album re-recorded with the current line-up. Liam recorded the drums with Talon Payne at Gallow Wood Media. Both Patreon EPs have been delayed due to the Covid-19 restrictions over the last few years pushing the new album back and we’re currently working through the backlog.