Dear Diary

 The German emo scene was especially vibrant in the early 2000s, and Dear Diary were a part of that. They were a band with one foot in midwest emo and the other in emo pop, and which way they leaned depends on which part of their discography you're listening to. Formed in 1995 (originally under the name Hate Was Sista), they began with a mixture of emo-pop punk and midwest emo, a sound they carried forward from their demo to their subsequent first album. The demo, first album, and the No.5 EP are more midwest emo-influenced than their subsequent releases, and as much as I like the last two albums, I kind of wish they had stuck with their original sound a bit more. At times, the EP especially sounds like fellow German emo band Reno Kid. But a healthy band needs to change and grow, and by the time of their second album, they had morphed towards emo pop that's a little heavier than you usually hear, a bit closer to post-hardcore, but they never forget their history and still make room for some midwest emo, all the way to the end.

In their original incarnation as Hate Was Sista, the band recorded a 1995 EP, Natural, which sounds like an experimental demo. It veers all over the place, a mixture emocore, hardcore, pop punk, and, weirdly enough, indie rock and grunge. For the 1998 follow up full album, d734, they zeroed in on the emo aspects, building up to their name change and new direction. Their first release as Dear Diary was a 1998 demo, followed in 1999 by an album, Some More Secrets. In 2001 they put out the No.5 EP. Two years later, they released the album they would be best known for, Laughing Ends Like This, which marks a shift in their sound towards emo pop with higher production values (though not too high—this is not 'mall emo'). How to Become a Ghost would follow in 2005, and their last release was a split with Trust Nolan in 2008. The band would call it quits not long after in 2009.

Dear Diary Discography

Hate Was Sista Discography