After years of going harder and faster, it seems the latest craze in the Hard Dance scene is actually going slower.
‘Slowtempo’ is starting to seep into DJ sets of mostly ‘raw’ Hardstyle and Uptempo artists. It essentially consists of dramatically slowing down the tempo and stretching out some sort of microwave or zaag kick for maximum shock value. This “new” trend arguably had its inception with FA TI CO, which won last year’s MOH Top 100, sat somewhat dormant for a while, and is now being embraced by many producers since. It’s finding its way through Hard Dance influencers pages. There’s even an event happening built around this whole low-BPM trend. But is this actually a new trend? I don’t think so…
Before we get in to all the ways our scene has slowed down over the past 15 years, I’d like to preface this article with a bit of a rant. Back in 2022 and 2023, people seemed astonished by zaagkicks in a way I never really understood. To my ears, there was barely anything underneath them. They were mostly enormous walls of distorted high frequencies with no actual bass backing them. Back then, I said this trend wouldn’t last another two festival seasons, and I was right, at least to an extent. The zaag lives on, but in a very different form, with producers retaining part of the signature distortion and high-end character of the zaag, but combining it with the unique depth and bass of Hard Dance kicks that make Hard Dance actually… hard (kind of an essential requirement of genres that call themselves, well… hard).
I see this ‘slowtempo’ trend going more or less the same direction the zaagkick trend did. And trust me, if producers keep making things like ‘slowtempo’ edits of Scrap Attack, it’s best for the scene as a whole (and our ears) that this trend gets phased out pretty soon (and yes, that is an edit I’ve unfortunately already had the chance to hear live).
With that aside, this trend of slowing down has already happened previously. Two people were instrumental in pushing the trend forward (both Italian), with Technoboy being the first, and releasing the very experimental The Undersound track back in 2009, which had no real follow-up, nor any immediate impact on the scene. What makes The Undersound especially funny in hindsight is that its vocal basically explains ‘slowtempo’: lower the tempo and stretch the kick. That was in 2009, and 17 years later, Hard Dance is rediscovering the same trick under a new name.
This outside the box track may or may have not brewed something within the Italian Hardstyle scene, with a meeting between Italian artists taking place the following year in order to discuss something beyond Hardstyle that didn’t happen, but eventually materialised through ACTI (who you may know by Activator… or even T78 nowadays). This “something” was eventually called Subground. You can read Manuel’s description of the genre in the linked interview, but here’s my take on it: Subground is a slowed-down version of Hardstyle with Electro House influences that taps into the heaviness of Hardstyle and the funkiness of Electro House for one cohesive, energetic offering that could open almost any Hard Dance night (I’ve even had the chance to open a Hardstyle event with Subground).
This is also where the similarities between Subground and ‘slowtempo’ mostly end. Subground used its lower BPM to create groove, tension and actual low-end weight. Slowtempo pushes the tempo even lower, but mainly seems to use the extra space to stretch heavily distorted kicks for maximum shock value.
This genre was pitched to Q-dance, and it eventually became a whole scene. Small and underground, but a whole scene nonetheless. And I was all for it! I loved the innovation and the style blend it brought to the table. And the events that represented this sound, aptly named Qult, were a really good addition to the extensive event lineup Q-dance was responsible for back then. It quickly developed a small but very real community around it, but stayed underground most of the time, with only a couple parties selling out. After 16 editions and a few hostings on festivals in and around Q’s sphere, the event shut down for good. This was likely due to financial constraints of hosting an event that doesn’t consistently sell out and achieve maximum profitability, and the fact that this underground sound was adopted by the mainstream (eventually becoming something different in the process, as predicted by the founding father himself).
Despite all this, I know from a good source that the people at Q-dance have always been really fond of the Qult concept, and tried to revive it often throughout the years. Continuing with the concept after the last event might have been on the table, but the reality was that that didn’t make much sense after doing an event that was clearly described as the last one. The concept was eventually brought back for a few afterparties at Defqon.1 in 2024, and for a full Qult takeover of the WHITE stage in 2025.
This brings us to present day and age… And I think the parallelism here is starting to become evident. Subground slowed Hard Dance down to make room for ideas. Slowtempo slows it down to make room for the kick. Same approach, different goals. And from that perspective, there might actually be something worth salvaging from ‘slowtempo’.
The irony here is that I don’t actually dislike the idea behind ‘slowtempo’. Quite the opposite. Slowing Hard Dance down and using the additional space to make every element hit harder is an idea with enormous potential. I know that because I’ve already heard what can happen when producers take it seriously. And that’s exactly why ‘slowtempo’ frustrates me – it’s basically being embraced as a meme at this point, with very little purpose beyond shock value. But I do hope its core idea lasts and evolves into something that unleashes a wave of creativity in the Hard Dance scene.
Important to note that doesn’t mean I want ‘slowtempo’ itself to become another permanent part of Hard Dance. Much like what happened with zaagkicks, I suspect producers will eventually take whatever useful lessons come out of this experiment and apply them elsewhere, hopefully at a considerably less ridiculous tempo. The gimmick can disappear while some of the ideas survive.
And that’s ultimately why I don’t think ‘slowtempo’ itself will last. Not because slowing Hard Dance down doesn’t work (Subground already proved that it absolutely can), but because I struggle to find much of an identity here beyond the kick. Once the shock value wears off and producers move on to the next obsession, I expect ‘slowtempo’ to disappear with it, leaving behind only whatever useful ideas were worth keeping in the first place.
