After one of our recent articles “Is RAW the new big-room?” we offered critique to raw hardstyle, giving insight into the specific formula that producers of that style have adapted which has thus resulted in a decline in originality and musicality. This article sparked a huge debate, especially by those raw fanatics who attempted to stick up for this ‘style,’ yet could barely give any legitimate reasons that suggested otherwise besides “this is bullshit,” or “but euphoric hardstyle is worse…” We made our points pretty damn clear. Aspects of raw hardstyle are lacking in originality, it’s no longer produced in a timeless manner and is simply about bringing an ‘aggressive appeal.’

Yes, we took a huge shit on raw hardstyle, however it wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t do the same to euphoric hardstyle, because that side of the spectrum is also lacking in many departments.

In a recent interview with Tek king Mark With A K, he gave interesting insight into the rise of raw hardstyle, making the following statement:

“I really understand the raw hardstyle movement because the music was turning into 2 minutes worth of emotional breaks and 30 seconds of hard kicks. Hardstyle is made for dancing, so I understand producers who make a very emotional break but it has to keep on moving and euphoric hardstyle wasn’t really doing that anymore.”

Coming from a guy who loves to put real emotion into his music, yet keeps his listeners moving, this statement highlighted a lot of things for myself and opened my eyes to why raw hardstyle came about. It’s all nice and fun for producers to whinge about the raw hardstyle hype, but in a way, their 2 minute emotional breaks and pointless remixes of house tracks kind of caused this…

So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of it, find out what went wrong and offer critique to this ‘sinking’ style.

Where it started:
Around 2011-2012, the ‘realness’ and groovy sounds of early hardstyle began fading away and becoming lost within the hype that certain producers created with combining elements of house music to hard dance in order to make the genre more accessible. This was not a good move. It fucked up the natural and pure hardstyle sound that offered hard beats, beautiful melodies, yet kept up the pace and kept fans hooked. The title of the genre says it all. It’s not called ‘accessible style’ or ‘house style’ for a fucking reason. It’s called hardstyle because it’s NOT made to appeal to every single person on this earth, it’s meant to be hard and underground to a certain extend and hardstyle shouldn’t simply be a sped up version of house music.

The one thing that pisses me off is the fact that there was a time where euphoric hardstyle was produced in such a clever way – it was emotional, yet still hard and continuously moving. That period between the old-school sound and overbearingly cheesy sound brought a lot of great music that had melodies and was emotional, yet sounded unique and fresh.

Here are just a small handful of examples from 2012-2013 that were melodic by nature, yet still retained appeal on the dance-floor:

1. Underground Language – Josh & Wesz

2. Geck-o – Soul Train


3. World Of Madness – Headhunterz, Wildstylez & Noisecontrollers

4. Da Tweekaz – Tweekend (+ their whole ‘Time 2 Shine’ album)


5. Coone – Music Is Art

6. Omegatypez – Dirty Style

7. Noisecontrollers – Pillars Of Creation (and also the rest of his discography)

8. Brennan Heart – Running Late

9. Adrenalize – Magical World

10. Frontliner – Keep It Up

Today’s euphoric hardstyle differs a lot to the above tracks when it comes to a lot of aspects. You can literally hear that a lot of artists take the easy route and make what’s familiar to them, rather than branching out, doing a great instrumental piece and bringing back the groove. There are enough house remixes and hardstyle tracks that sound like sped up house… Don’t you think that it’s time for a change?

The thing that melodic producers need to have on their minds is producing music that doesn’t fit inside a ‘box.’ At the moment, I hear a lot of the same stuff that consists of either remixes of house tracks that barely sound original or tracks that have a soft intro, break into overly emotional and cheesy vocals for a couple of minutes then have hard kicks for only a small portion of the track. Producers need to be more innovative and with all due respect to their signature sounds, but experimenting with versatile melodies and creating music that goes beyond the ‘normal’ structure will push tracks to go the distance.

Another thing that I’ve noticed a lot nowadays with melodic hardstyle is that producers are using the same supersaw, thus making their tracks similiar to each other. Back in the days you could just hear an artists’ signature sound, simply because they all had their own kicks, synths, leads and screeches, however nowadays, that concept of originality in that sense got very lost when every producer wanted to sound like Code Black or Noisecontrollers.

Saying this, it’s been quite easy to pick out a handful of stand-out tracks from 2014 and 2015 which bring such a unique, fresh and versatile approach to the table. These are just a few examples of melodic hardstyle done right; they have a catchy melody, emotionally approachable, are entertaining and are an all-round showcase of what real hardstyle should sound like.

And since when did Hard Drop become a ‘thing?’
A lot of former melodic producers have begun producing music that resembles big-room house at 150BPM. Personally, we do not call this hardstyle, it’s merely interesting and there’s little to no room for creativity within this style. Growth on the hard dance spectrum is great, but we don’t need to hear 50 million hard drop released each month, hardstyle producers should stick to doing what they do best.

In the end…
Euphoric producers complain about raw, raw producers complain about euphoric – there’s no end to it! There seriously needs to be a middle ground that celebrates music containing hard kicks, an underground atmosphere, yet still uplifting and energetic. Is going back to the older style the answer? Maybe, maybe not; but there’s surely a hell of a lot to learn from our roots!

So, let’s take it to our readers – do you agree with what we’ve said? What do you hope to see in the coming years when it comes to hardstyle? Do you think that melodic hardstyle needs a kick in the ass? Well, let us know in the comments below!

There is hope! Next month (November), just like we took a look at raw hardstyle, we will also be blocking out one week to celebrate all things melodic and euphoric during our “Melodic Week!” Stay tuned on our social media pages for more information and dates.