For some time now, I’ve wanted to share my thoughts and feelings about what is currently labeled as “Hard Techno”. However, over the past few years, I’ve struggled to organize these thoughts on this new thing cohesively. I also lacked a proper platform to fully articulate my perspective on this new phenomenon. I’ve been thinking long and hard about this new scene, how they behave, the issues they cause, the general lack of respect this scene has towards EDM as a whole, and their self-branded “underground” appearance when they’re pretty much the opposite of that.
So let’s begin. I will do my best in conveying my thoughts and opinions in the most respectful way possible, back them with facts whenever relevant, and ultimately provide you insights from someone who’s been on the actual Hard Dance scene for… let’s just say, a little while.
Sometime between late 2018 and early 2019, Techno started to change. It was clearly visible for those on the Hard Dance side that a part of Techno was getting a bit more aggressive as time went by. The writing was on the wall when Activator left Hard Dance to focus on his Techno alias – T78. While it was disappointing to lose an artist like Manuele, one has to respect the fact that he didn’t connect with modern Hardstyle. The matter of the fact is that many long time listeners unfortunately do not connect with Hardstyle anymore, which I somewhat understand, given the genre, while still true to it’s roots, fundamentally changed (but that’s a conversation for another time). However, what many don’t realize, is that beyond this particular moment in time, Techno itself didn’t fundamentally change. Instead, opportunistic promoters exploited this trend, marketing a new sound under the banner of “Techno”, to sell a new product to mostly edgy teens and early adults that are largely unfamiliar with EDM. This sound, heavily influenced by early Hardstyle, was misleadingly branded as “Hard Techno”. Since that’s simply not true, and God knows how long they will be able to get away with mislabeling this new thing, they are now deciding to move towards the term “Neorave”.
After 2019, Covid came, and everything went to sh*t. Flash forward that unfortunate and miserable time on our lives, we arrive in 2022 where events began to return. If you go back in time, one of the first few big events being held on this genre were Verknipt and Tegendraads. For me, these events marked the start of a movement that spread across Europe and eventually reached my home country, Portugal.
That movement was a steady stream of event promoters and artists pushing Hardstyle parties, sets and productions as Techno. While the authentic Techno scene stayed mostly unchanged across Europe, these opportunists have taken their name, our sound, mashed it up, and repackaged it for their own profit. It wasn’t an homage or evolution – it was pure opportunism, built on deception, misinformation, and profit oriented choices.
Since 2022, this narrative has only intensified. Promoters continue to feed people with parties that are mostly Hardstyle in its nature, falsely marketing it as “Techno” to an audience that is largely new to electronic music, automatically misleading them. Artists compound the issue by sharing footage of very energetic and aggressive sets where they mostly play tracks on the extreme edge of Hardstyle, and call it “Techno”.
The result? Nowadays, these promoters fill clubs, festivals, and even a whole goddamned stadium that not even ID&T dares to book.
So as you can see, these people are now unavoidable. Why is that unfortunate, you may ask? Let me guide you through that…
To begin with, I’m not even going to talk about my (our!) scene, let’s talk about the Techno folks. True Techno fans. I know a few and the first thing they all agree on is that this new wave of “Hard Techno” isn’t Techno at all. They do not connect with this sound, and it’s easy to explain why – it’s basically Hardstyle with a bit of Hardcore, from top to bottom. There’s very little that aligns with traditional Techno on these new events. The only tenuous connection lies in Hardcore’s early roots, which borrowed elements from Techno before evolving into a distinct genre. This quickly faded away as the sound evolved towards something completely new called Hardcore.
Proponents of this new movement often argue that all genres stem from House and Techno, including Hardcore. While technically true, what they fail to see (or pretend to) is that Hardcore is something entirely different from what was being done in the House and Techno scenes. Gabbers invented something completely different – they did not steal and remarket something under a different name for profit.
With that aside, we can talk about the effects of this trend on the Hard Dance scene…
While attendees of these “Neorave” events rarely venture into traditional Hard Dance events – and some even claim they dislike Hardstyle, ironically dismissing the very genre they’re consuming – the usual Hard Dance fans now have more events on which they can spend their raving allowance. It is shortsighted to say they they will all be absolute purists that won’t attend these new “Techno” events, so the matter of the fact is that established Hard Dance promoters face increased competition, and will have a harder time filling up the venues they book, generating less revenue, which in turn, will slow down the scene… This is a big threat to the financial sustainability of genuine Hard Dance promoters.
Flat out stealing a genre and appropriating it under a different name is an insult and a disservice to both the Hard Dance and Techno scenes. The Techno scene gets misrepresented for what it isn’t. Real Hard Techno acts such as Pet Duo and Daniela Haverback are overshadowed by the noise of this fad, because fake “Hard Techno” steals their spotlight in social media. Most “Hard Techno” productions are in it’s essence Hardstyle and don’t just limit themselves to stealing samples – they copy whole tracks, structures, ideas and elements that have always been exclusively linked with the harder styles. They copy it shamelessly, even from people who are unfortunately not among us anymore, and when they get called out, they respond with entitlement and hostility, promptly telling people to f*ck right off.
They misrepresent crowds from both Hard Dance and Techno scenes and embody the stereotypical “raver persona” that was popular in the late 90’s/early 00’s, which led to people outside of this culture generally badmouth us – anti-social behavior and drug abuse are prevalent, from what I see and hear, making the people of this scene the exact opposite of what the EDM scene stands for. It’s worth reminding people that at some point in the late 90’s in Europe, actual EDM fans were assumed to have this very same persona that was convenient for the media and police to portray, just because people didn’t like the “noise” we made, resulting in things like Ilja Reiman being arrested just so the police and media could flaunt that weapon and drug trafficking operations were shut down, when the only thing these people were guilty for was occupy more or less abandoned locations to share their love for the music.
For all these reasons, fake “Hard Techno”, or recycled Hard-techno-style, as I like to call it, is a passing fad. I see three possible outcomes to this scene, from most to least likely:
- This scene gets old, repetitive and simply disappears, with fans grabbing another life buoy elsewhere on EDM, or any other genre. They move to somewhere else that is trendy on socials and where they can feel that dopamine rush of being part of a new trend where marketing makes them believe they are unique and edgy, and that gives them some fleeting sense of belonging.
- This scenes merges with the ‘mainline’ Hard Dance scene. Somehow fans of this trend realize that what they hear is mostly Hardstyle and Hardcore, and that their calling is in these genres, and these events simply merge into each other, with “Neorave” fading away. Most of this crowd becomes your typical Hardstyle and Hardcore crowd with a few not identifying themselves with this sound and moving elsewhere.
- This scene withstands the test of time and everything continues as is. This is the least likely outcome, given its lack of depth and passion.
It’s interesting to lay out these points, and see that this scene has the exact opposite problem of the Hardstyle scene in my country. Ultimately, while the Hardstyle scene in my country struggles with limited funding but strong passion, “Neorave” thrives financially but lacks authenticity. History tells us that without passion, no scene can sustain itself. This is why I’m betting on this scene disappearing as the final outcome.
We shall see what the future holds. In the meantime, I will be here, as I always was, serving Hard Dance the best I can.
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As an attachment to this article, I will drop below a playlist of videos from so called “Techno” artists playing anything but Techno on events that are labeled as Techno, in posts with hashtags targeting the Techno community… If these examples do not drive the point of this article home, then I don’t really know what would. I have several examples of this collected through the years and I will upload them all in the coming days