Gates of Dawn is one of the obscure bands from Ontario that just doesn’t seem to have reached anywhere to be remembered. I had to dig far to get info from this band out. This band was fronted by Nat Coté with Adam Bratt and Paul Charpentier on guitars, Alexandra Lamoureux on bass and Mike Maxymuik on drums. Each came from different parts of Ontario; Mike and Adam from Hamilton, Paul from Guelph, Nat from Brantford and Alex from Burlington. They all went to a French high school in Hamilton, so they all practiced at Mike’s house after school on Fridays. The band was around for a couple years (1994-1996) while they were all in high school together, and the shows were few and far between (about ten shows were played total, all in Guelph, Hamilton, Mississauga and Oakville).
They named themselves after a Comodore 64 game of the same name. It was all their first band, and their sound wasn’t specific. They listened to a lot of DC stuff like Fugazi and Hoover, hardcore like Chokehold and Struggle, and also emo like Farside and Samiam. Their music was noisy and fast, and could easily be considered one of the early screamo (or emo violence, in the likes of Ebullition Records) bands. They recorded a four song demo in Mitch Mommaerts’s house in Guelph, which was released as split with Glen (Mike also played drums for them) on a very limited run of home made tapes on Mitch’s own Inconnu Records. The studio was in Mitch’s garage, which was seperate from the house, and they used walkie-talkies to communicate. The studio time was paid off with spare change.
Dan K. got together the idea of releasing a Gates of Dawn split with Blake on his label Upheaval Records. The split was even advertised in an issue of HeartattaCk, however Blake decided to pull out for whatever reason. Dan decided to still do a Gates of Dawn 7″ EP and went with the band to record three songs at Signal 2 Noise with Rob Sanzo. Only a week after finishing the recording, someone in the band decided they were going to release the 7″ with Gorilla Warfare Records instead. The label must have promised them something more, as it had done when it promised New Day Rising and Hourglass to release their split, and flaked out. Of course the label flaked out of the Gates of Dawn release as well. But one of the songs recorded would be used for “The 49th Parallel” compilation by Old Glory Records/Disillusion Records. Another of these songs was scheduled to be on the “Benefit for the Buffalo Animal Defense League” compilation that Dave Buschemeyer was putting together in 1996, but Struggle Records never released it. The band gradually faded out when Mike and Alex joined Acrid and started playing shows almost every weekend with them.
Unfortunately the two demos have not been found by anyone, so all there is to offer is their appearance on “The 49th Parallel“. If the demos ever surface, I shall surely post them up here.
