News / seasonal
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1 min read
The Defqon.1 anthem is the one tradition hardstyle got right
Read more . . . →We’re under two weeks out from Defqon.1, which means it’s time to talk about the one piece of festival marketing that actually rules: the yearly anthem. Every June, Q-dance hands one artist the job of summing up the whole weekend in five minutes of kicks and screaming synths, and somehow it keeps landing. Most festival anthems are forgettable. These are the ones people still scream back a decade later. Here’s the through-line from 2011 to last summer. 1. Noisecontrollers - Unite The one that set the template. 2011 Noisecontrollers is pure early-Defqon euphoria, back when the kick still had a...
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1 min read
Defqon.1 let a meme collective close the mainstage and honestly, good
Read more . . . →The strangest booking of Defqon.1 2026: GPF, a collective whose entire brand is treating gabber as the world’s loudest inside joke, get the RED mainstage on Sunday. That’s the ceremonial closing slot, normally handed to a hardstyle institution with a decade of history behind it. This year it goes to the people making uptempo bootlegs of pop songs. I’m fully on board. 1. GPF, DJ Gollum, BassWar & CaoX - I Want It That Way (Uptempo) Yes, it’s the Backstreet Boys. Yes, it’s pushing 180 BPM and completely sincere about being ridiculous. The whole point of GPF is that you...
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1 min read
The women running Defqon.1's hardest stages
Read more . . . →Hardcore gets typecast as a boys’ club, and the people actually closing these stages keep proving otherwise. A couple weeks out from Defqon.1, here are three who have spent years setting the pace instead of following it. 1. Miss K8 & Tha Watcher - Reflections Miss K8 came out of Ukraine and turned into one of hardcore’s most bankable headliners. “Reflections,” the Harmony of Hardcore 2025 anthem with vocalist Tha Watcher, is two women owning a festival’s entire identity for a year. 2. AniMe - In The End AniMe has been a fixture of Italian hardcore for years, and in...
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1 min read
Uptempo: 200 BPM was the floor, not the ceiling
Read more . . . →Uptempo is what happens when hardcore decides that slowing down is for cowards. It’s the fastest, most aggressive corner of the Defqon.1 site, kicks distorted past the point of melody, and the crowd that shows up for it knew exactly what it was signing up for. A couple weeks out, here’s where the speed lives. 1. Riot Shift - RUNNIN Riot Shift has turned into one of the sharper names in this lane, and “RUNNIN,” out in October, is relentless in the way the title promises. 2. N-Vitral presents BOMBSQUAD & Dimitri K - Energy Drink The BOMBSQUAD alias is...
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1 min read
Frenchcore: the genre that decided hardstyle naps too much
Read more . . . →A few weeks out from Defqon.1, and if the mainstage hardstyle isn’t doing it for you, frenchcore is both the answer and the warning. Faster, rollier, 200 BPM and climbing, built on a kick that gallops where hardstyle stomps. Defqon hands it real estate every year because the people who love it do not love it quietly. Three to start with. 1. Dr. Peacock & D’ort - Frenchcore Lullaby Dr. Peacock basically built the modern frenchcore audience, and “Frenchcore Lullaby” is him being funny about it. Nothing here is putting anyone to sleep. 2. Billx - Jump Now Billx came...
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1 min read
Defqon.1's hard half: where hardstyle is the warm-up
Read more . . . →Defqon.1 hits Biddinghuizen at the end of June and most of the coverage fixates on the mainstage hardstyle. Fine. But the reason this festival makes every other summer lineup look soft lives one stage over, where the kicks stop being polite. Hardcore, frenchcore, uptempo, the harder end of the site. If regular hardstyle already feels too gentle for you, here’s your map for the rest of the week. 1. Angerfist - The Nightmare Man Angerfist has been the face of Dutch hardcore for two decades and “The Nightmare Man,” out last November, is him doing the thing nobody does better....
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1 min read
Rebelion gets a full stage at Defqon.1 and they've been building to this
Filthy Rave is filthy and it is a rave. Rebelion and Warface doing exactly what it says on the tin and asking zero further questions.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogLooks like Helvetica. Sounds like a closing argument. -
1 min read
Sub Zero Project: 2025-2026 in three tracks
Sub Zero Project is one of the most consistent acts in hardstyle. Our World doesn't reinvent anything — it doesn't need to.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogThree words. One opinion. Cotton. -
1 min read
Rawstyle vs euphoric: the two camps you're walking into
Read more . . . →Three weeks to Defqon.1 and if you’re new to this, hardstyle has a civil war inside it. Rawstyle is the darker, harder, more industrial side — distorted kicks, aggressive energy, not interested in making you feel things in a warm way. Euphoric is the other thing: massive melodic builds, soaring vocals, the stuff that makes people raise their hands at 3am and mean it. Defqon.1 has room for both and so does the lineup. Here’s what each side sounds like. 1. Brennan Heart - Interstellar Brennan Heart is closing the Spotlight this year — the closing set of the entire...
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Defqon.1 is 22 days out and everything else looks soft
Read more . . . →The Gathering kicks off June 20th. Three weeks out and Defqon.1 is already making every other summer lineup on the calendar look like a Coldplay concert. Hardstyle in a field in the Netherlands, multiple stages worth of it, crowd that made a deliberate choice to be there. If you’ve been sleeping on this: here’s the lineup doing the talking. 1. D-Sturb ft. E-Life - Sacred Oath D-Sturb got handed the 2026 anthem and made something that actually deserves the title. “Sacred Oath” builds properly, drops hard, doesn’t overstay — and the theme this year is right in the name. This...
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