Stefan Leibing

Stefan Leibing was Primal Fear's guitarist through much of the band's consolidating phase. Born in Germany in 1972, he was part of the group in the period when it stopped being a newly formed project and became a fixture of European power metal. His spell covers the records on which Primal Fear found its identity: Nuclear Fire (2001), Black Sun (2002), Devil's Ground (2004), Seven Seals (2005) and New Religion (2007). It is the period in which the band settled the formula that would define it — broad choruses, high tempos carried by continuous double kick and, above all, guitars harmonised in two and three voices, an openly declared inheritance from Judas Priest. That last feature explains Leibing's function. In a repertoire built on harmonisation, the second guitarist's role is not to be an alternative to the first but his exact counterpart: the lines must be played with identical articulation so that they sound like a single instrument at two pitches. It is precision work that is only noticed when it fails. Besides guitar, he contributed keyboards on some of the group's recordings.