??? PLEASE GIVE US A FEW DETAILS ABOUT YOUR BAND.
Steven: Well, we are Logar´s Diary from Berlin, Germany. Logar was founded 97/98. Until now we are 6 man piece. All crazy and lovin´ making music.
Stefan: Actually we all grew up with Metal and always keep an eye on having fun playing our music, cause that’s how it should be: having a good time -we playing - the fans listening.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE AND WHICH DO YOU CONSIDER AS YOUR MAJOR INFLUENCES ?
Steven: First of all we are playin´ Power Metal. You can haer a little bit of Blind Guardian, a little bit of Running Wild and Gamma Ray in our music.I think this is the best way to describe our music. You know, it´s hard to explain what we are doing… we are Logar´s Diary… 100% anytime. Power Riffs with orchestral arrangements, choirs and a special mood. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad. Sometimes bright, sometimes dark. But all the time it is melodic.
Stefan: That’s it....filled up with tons of energy we set free playing this stuff live. Our musical influences are quite different as no one listens just to Power Metal. There are thrash/death/black-metal influences within the band which just seem to focus in the music we’re playing.
LOGAR`S DIARY IS A QUITE STRANGE SOUNDING NAME AND QUITE ORIGINAL AT THE SAME TIME. CAN YOU TELL US A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT THE MEANING OF IT ?
Steven: The meaning is very simple. You know, Logar is my roleplaying character. I play Logar for many years now, and sometimes I wrote down the things he´s going through. I write his diary. Logar´s Diary is a pure Earthdawn ( Name of the Roleplay Game ) band. So we made music out of his diary. Therefore Logar´s Diary.
YOU HAVE JUST RELEASED YOUR DEBUT , SELF-FINANCED I BELIEVE , CD. WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL US A FEW THINGS ABOUT IT ?
Stefan: It is a self-financed production, right. And self-recorded and mixed by Felix, our bass-player....unfortunately with a drum computer (from my point of view), but otherwise I would never have met them, as i bought their CD in a shop - and it blew me away.
Steven: The CD is the story about Iostros, a huge bad magician who is allied with a very evil Demon. Logar and T´skirrel try to defend Barsaive ( The land where the story takes place) from the unholy evil. You know, the whole thing is one story… so the lyrics can nearly be read as one. Christoph brought the story in a short form and we put it above the lyrics in the booklet. So you can read and understand the whole concept.
I HAVE READ REVIEWS ABOUT YOUR ALBUM , TALKING ABOUT A STYLE SIMILAR TO THE FANTASY BASED POWER/SPEED METAL IN THE LIKES OF BLIND GUARDIAN . DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS ?
Steven: Of course we do. You know, nothing else can catch the spirit of fantasy as perfect as this kind of music. When we start, we´d never say… hey, let´s play Power Metal, we had the story, we made the songs and this is what happened. I mean Guardian is one of the best bands. You wont hear Guardian all the time in our music, so it´s very nice to be compared with them. Some compared us with Rhapsody, I think this isn´t true because we´re straight all the time. We wanna kick ass, you know.
Stefan: Nothing to add except that we try to keep that kind of rough guitar-sound, to make our songs sound a bit more aggressive as it is usually done in Power Metal - productions.
AS I HAVE ALREADY MENTIONED , I BELIEVE THAT YOUR LYRIC APPROACH HAS A STRONG EPIC HEROIC LITERATURE TOUCH. AM I RIGHT ? IF YES , DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELVES AS FANS OF FANTASY LITERATURE ?
Steven: Everyone of us is interested in fantasy. Some more than others, but first of all we´re fans. Fans of the music, fans of fantasy. If you do something you´re not interested in, you will do it badly. We play just what we want, just what we love. Some bad tongues say we just copy. I mean when you hear the music in spite of copying you´ll find parts which sounds like others did before. But when we write a song, we just write it. We don´t think to take some kind of Gamma Ry, some kind of Running Wild and so on.
ANOTHER THING THAT STROKE ME IS YOUR EXCELLENT WEB PAGE. I BELIEVE THAT EVEN MAJOR BANDS DON`T HAVE SUCH A QUALITY WEB PAGE. NOT ONLY ABOUT THE DESIGN BUT ALSO ABOUT THE INFO. ESPECIALLY THE LINK SECTION IS ONE OF THE BEST I HAVE EVER MET. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS WORK AND HOW IMPORTANT IS A GOOD SITE FOR A BAND NOWADAYS ACCORDING TO YOUR PERSONAL OPINION ?
Steven: Oh, this was done by an old friend of mine. He´s a crack doing this. We love this page, it´s exactly what we want. Christoph is making the updates… everything new he posts, so you can always be top informed concerning Logar´s Diary. I think a good site is not responsible for a good band but a good site is better than a bad site. If you present a good site, people take more time to look at it. If a site is boring you´ll leave before you just read the news. We just want to offer the best we can do.
Christoph: The links section is my work. I´m a huge Power Mertal fan and write for a fanzine called Fame of Metal (
WHICH ARE YOUR CURRENT PLANS ? DO YOU HAVE ANY NEW MATERIAL READY ?
Steven: First of all we signed at Metal Fortress Entertainment, a Swedish label, to release the next CD. At the moment, I finish the
story for the next album. The next step is to write new songs. We have tons of new material. So we will sort the good riffs and make
new songs. Book II will be released in 2002, so stay tuned. This time we´ll have help from MFE to spread the new one all over the world.
So at this time it will be easier to get our CD from your local store. I hope so. But I´m very good looking forward.
Stefan: New material is written and must be arranged in the next weeks. then we’re doing a preproduction to create the drumparts, and hopefully
in late spring we begin recording sessions. so, be aware… Logar will strike again !
FREE SPACE . ADD ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY WANT.
Steven: I want to thank everyone who supported us. Everyone who took the time to listen to our music. A big thank goes out to our fans who wrote
us such nice emails and letters. I want to greet MFE in Sweden, Megahard Records in Brazil and all the supporters from the local stores.
Thank you for the interview.
Stefan: So far a big thanx to our fans worldwide, especially to the South American fans who wrote lots of e-mails.....we hope to tour South
America in the future - the spirit is alive, keep the fire burning. Cheers !
Interview by Stavros
