In the early 90s the Hardline movement was flourishing. Vegan Straight Edge was at an all time high, and boy did a lot of people get annoyed with them. Regardless of me not necessarily adhering to many of their "guidelines" I did however enjoy a lot of the bands from those days. Even if most of them pretty much flaked out and turned into what most of their lyrics were about.
Syracuse hardcore was no stranger to the Veg-Edge movement. Around the same time Earth Crisis was starting out there was another band with some of the same members called Framework. Framework was more melodic vocally and musically but backed by the same ideals. Vocalist Shane Durgee had a very distinct vocal style. Framework made a decent mark over their span with 2 7"s and a CD.
It seemed like vocalist Shane went through a string of bands after Framework that just didn't seem to stick. Many of them would produce a demo and not go much further than that. Gatekeeper was no exception. I'm sure they probably played a few local shows but other than that I don't know if people outside of the 'Cuse would have heard of them. I believe that the guitarist Dave was also in Green Rage who had a 7" out on Shane's label. You can hear a lot of similarities between the 2 bands musically. The drums are a little rough in spots as it seems like he can't quite pull off his beats as heard in the beginning of track 3. Regardless this was a decent demo for the time and continued the Syracuse Vegan Straight Edge legacy. This demo was recorded June 1st 1994 at Penguin Studios.
1. "Filth"
2. "One Million Incisions"
3. "The Flames of Salvation"
4. "Vigilante"
16 comments:
Agressive !
I like this band !
Am I remembering correctly that this band had some member sharing going on with Cross-Section?
Nice. 90% of the time when a song has a two-and-a-half-minute instrumental intro it's going to be solid, ha, ha...
I've always wanted to hear this band as all the japanese kids namedrop em, good shit ems ;)
Yeah, Crossection/Beta Minus Mechanic had Pete Spielman on Bass. Before those bands Pete played Bass in a really hard Skinhead HxC band called Flakjacket that were similar to Breakdown sound wise, and were loads of fun live.
This demo is rad. Syracuse lyricists always had a knack for terrifyingly militant lyrical statements."There is justice and there is death, and you're about to face both...." yikes.
I wish I still had all my early Syracuse demo's so I could post the somewhere. Bonejack, Flakjacket, Infusion, and Blood Runs Black were all pretty great for their time. I never cared for Green Rage. I really got sick of that E Chord.
I have this demo but with another cover. I ordered it directly from Militant Rec.
Awesome band! Where is Shane now?
myspace.com/Alfredge
xxx
I ran into this drummer not too long ago in philly. the only dude claiming he was hardine in the band i think.
he's a total trainhopping dread head.
still edge and vegan to the best of my knowledge though!
so glad to finally get this demo in digital format.
never saw this band during my time in syracuse, but i wish i had. one of my syracuse favorites. after green rage of course.
Pete Spielman = morrissey maniac
i liked framework a bit more. Gatekeeper 7" was awesome.
how about TALISMAN, Eric? have you heard that? well, its Pete, Dave A, Rat of statement and chris m (ex-unborn).... one song recorded but shit sounds great.
Woah...Adam you mentioned Talisman. I have it on MP3 if you want it.
As for Gatekeeper. When I lived in da cuse Pete told me that he had joined green rage on bass, Matt Bullard joined on drums. Something happened justin decided he didn't want to do Green rage anymore. The song viglante was musically written to be a Green rage song believe it or not.
When justin quit they asked Shane to sing thus it became Gatekeeper. After Solstice and before Joining EXC Kris Weichman also played in gatekeeper for like two shows. The mosh part for situation degenerates pete wrote for Gatekeeper and Kris used it for EXc when they broke up.
-David Ags
i'd love to get that talisman song.
someone needs to do a blog with scans of old hardline zines and such for informational and historical clarity.
www.myspace.com/talismanvsxe
in the unlikely chance anyone else looks at this.
Hey, I've been viewing your blog for the last 2 or more years. I downloaded the Gatekeeper demo and I thought it was awesome. I bought the Realization comp on ebay 3 years ago when I was 15, and I remember when I heard Gatekeeper it sounded a lot like that Framework track.
I asked David Agranoff if he write me up something about the GK demo, because i'm really no good at all that shit. But I asked him so I could put it on my blog I run, which just has 3 or 4 post, but i'm getting there.
What he wrote was pretty damn awesome, but it was mainly to be about Framework, and the GK is added in, still great.
I got all the scans for the demo from you when you made that post. I plan to add the GK demo as a download bonus with the Framework disco. i'm posting.
Just giving you a heads up and i'll post your link and all as to where I stole all that!
Take care, and I should have that post up by Sunday because I hate the Superbowl and it'll give me something to do.
Aaron.
Here's my link to my blog if for some reason it didn't get posted.
xtartartusx.blogspot.com
im surprised that anyone still has interest in the demo besides those archivists who have to get everything in any particular genre.
in defense of the pretty bad musicianship on the demo, we had only been a band for about two months and the song one million incisions was written the night before we recorded by me and i insisted it be on the demo. in defense of matts drumming, he made it clear that he had just gotten a double chain drive for his bass drum and really couldnt pull it off yet but again, i insisted that we couldnt be heavy enough without it so he played along and you can hear the dragging beats as a result. the demo was recorded and mixed in four hours.
we played two shows. one in syracuse and one in new haven, ct at the tune inn with earth crisis and soulstice(exc covered true till death at that show as a practice for the next days big new years show in syracuse.)
mat decided to move back to little rock and we got corey ryan of infusion and blood runs black(and one of the best drummers in syracuse.) we decided to fill out our sound by adding a second guitarist. kris was already in soulstice and had just joined exc and they gave him an ultimatum that he couldnt be in three bands because of exc's heavy schedule so he left and we got steve diangelo(bonejack/cross section/samsara) to replace him. we wrote some really heavy and great songs for a 7" but the band disintegrated before this could happen.
everyone in the band at the time was hardline except shane, although he was very sympathetic to the movement, hence the disclaimer on the demo and why it was never a full-fledged "hardline" band.
because of the controversy surrounding hardline, when militant records offered to repress the demo, they reprinted the bands mission statement minus the part about hardline and omitted the hardline graphics in the original demo layout.
the band started out of a green rage practice where we were trying out matt to play drums and while talking after practice, we all agreed it was too difficult to be in a band with justin. "vigilante" was written at this practice. we broke up the band and started gatekeeper which was basically green rage without justin. we all loved framework and shane and i were good friends so it was agreed that we should get him to sing. the first songs we wrote were more melodic, in the vein of framework, but we decided to go in a heavier direction and scrapped those songs. i think thats everything you could ever need to know about gatekeeper. the end. love, pete
So I downloaded this demo more than 5 years ago ... and was still listening to this shit today.
Thanks for posting it, sure it's not the best demo out there etc ... but there's definitely something to it that makes me listen to it regularly.
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