Dual Damage

Dual Damage (Thijs Rooijakkers and Jesper Habraken) compress rawstyle’s hardest edge and euphoric hardstyle’s lift into one sound, and the scene has been quick to reward it.

The rise

Rooijakkers and Habraken each arrived with solo mileage (under the earlier aliases Backfire and Primex) before joining forces, and the duo’s formula announced itself fast: extreme, heavy kick design coupled with energetic breaks and genuinely uplifting melodies, an “ultimate extra raw experience” that plays as well on mainstages as in the pit. In 2023 the scene made it official, naming them Most Promising Artist at the Hardstyle Awards.

Streams to match

The numbers back the title. Five Dual Damage tracks have passed a million Spotify streams, with ‘Hiding’ clearing three million, remarkable reach for an act this young in a genre where streams traditionally lag behind festival draw. Their Spotify popularity score sits in the same range as artists with ten times their history.

The company they keep

Dual Damage’s blend places them at the centre of hardstyle’s current conversation, alongside fellow risers like The Saints and Aversion, the generation dissolving the line between raw aggression and melodic reach that once divided the genre, the same territory the xtra raw wave keeps pushing harder.

Every new Dual Damage release lands on the Hardstyle Release Radar the day it hits Spotify. The full tracked catalogue is listed above.