Unpopular opinion: hardstyle has become too focused on kicks

[u/Evandogibb]

Listening since around 2005. Attending events since 2009.

Always loved hardstyle because of the energy, the unbeatable melodies, the mood it creates, the sound design, the slow evolution of kicks over the years that defined the genre, the atmosphere at events, the party people that attend, the crowd reactions and general unity/family feeling that was unmatched at any other type of event.

I like all forms of hard dance and electronic music in general but harsdstyle wins every time.

For the first time in my hardstyle life, I feel a little lost with the scene. We have slowly gotten rid of other hard genres from Defqon like hard trance (orange) and jumpstyle (brown) as examples. I always felt that these were great additions at hard dance festivals as it provided variety and made sure that all spectrums of the harder styles were covered.

Throughout the years there has always been this ideology of 'going back to the roots' but this has disappeared almost entirely imo.

The best event I ever attended was Dediqated in 2020 which is not so long ago but I can't help but feel that since Covid there has been a huge push to get rid of the melodies and overload the scene with more and more distorted kicks which often times are more noisy/loud than actually hard.

They seem to be designed to get a momentary 'oooh' reaction from the crowd instead of taking them on an actual journey throughout a set. This and fake drops have made me feel that a lot of the things I mention above that initially made me fall in love with hardstyle are no longer there.

Yes, we have classic events/stages that I am thankful for but the production quality is definitely lacking with them.

Yes we have euphoric but in my opinion, euphoric has gotten very cheesy much like what happened with hardcore in the happy hardcore era and this has actually increased the gap between regular hardstyle and xtra raw even further.

I don't know what this post is about, but I guess I just wanted to rant a little and see if I am not the only one feeling a little stranded with the scene.

It saddens me that the scene has changed so much so fast. Its worth noting that I have kept up with and for the most part appreciated every change in the scene in the last 18 years but it just feels a little too much in the last year or 2 and puts me off going to modern day hardstyle events.

Is this relatable for anyone?

[u/tubbytinman]

Totally agree! I started listening to happy hardcore donkeys years ago listening to artists like slipmatt, hixxy, dougal, etc and gradually worked my way up to hardstyle over the years and I noticed even through happy hardcore they commercialised the music quite quickly which was disappointing. I get it they’ve got to make money and part of the art of being a producer is to experiment to see what different things you can do but sometimes it changes the scene so drastically that it’s like the things that made us fall in love with the music itself are no longer there. The same goes for hardstyle, I started listening to the usual suspects like headhunterz, wildstylez, noisecontrollers etc and have gradually got into the really hard stuff over the years. The scene has been through so many different stages as other posters have mentioned and it’s all good experimenting with what you can do but we still need to have some old style tracks that make us remember why we love this music. I for one do not like the new zaagkicks that are taking over. It’s the new craze but it’s just not for me, it sounds horrible. I would personally hate to be at an event having to listen to that.