The band was formed in late '92 by Mikael Sandorf (vocals), Andreas Johansson (drums), Stefan Nilsson (guitar) and Harald Åberg (bass). After some time the guys felt that there were something missing in the band so they started to ask around for another guitarplayer, and after a while Tomas Jutenfäldt joined the band. The band started to rehearse for a demorecording but many things happened on their way towards the "Seasons of Frost" demo. . . First they began to search for a name for the band and Harald were the guy to find one. . . Gates of Ishtar were the obvious name for their music and opinions. Andreas designed the logo and now their journey started. . .
In early May 1995 the demo "Seasons of Frost" were recorded in the Lucichrist studio. The response that came for the demo were great so Gates of Ishtar signed for one full-length album on the Finnish label Spinefarm Records. After a year of songwriting, the debut CD "A Bloodred Path" were recorded in the Finnish studio Tico-Tico in early´96. The record were released by Spinefarm in June´96 and the response were very good everywhere. . . Many offers came from other labels and because of the bad promotion from Spinefarm, Gates of Ishtar changed their label to German label Invasion Records. A contract for two full-length albums were signed and the band started to work on their second CD "The Dawn of Flames".
Now a big change took place. Oskar & Niklas left the band because of personal disagreements between all the members. The gates asked Henrik if he wanted to play drums on the album and he joined the band again. Mikael started to work on some songs together with Andreas. After some time they started to rehearse on the new material for "The Dawn of Flames". It didn´t take much time for the guys to understand that they needed a bassplayer for the album, so Tomas asked an old friend, Danjel Röhr, if he were interested and Danjel became a session musician for "The Dawn of Flames". In early '97 the time had come to enter the studio Unisound so Gates Of Ishtar traveled to Örebro and met up with the studioguy, Dan Swanö, to record the second album "The Dawn of Flames". The recording went great and Invasion Records got the CD out right on time. . .On the 25th of Mars 1997 the album were released worldwide. . .
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