Sub Zero Project

Sub Zero Project (Thomas Velderman and Nigel Coppen) are the sound of hardstyle’s internet generation: a duo formed over YouTube whose psy-influenced kick design became one of the most distinctive signatures in modern hard dance.

Met online, signed as teenagers

Coppen was producing as “Sub Zero” when he came across Velderman’s tracks on YouTube; they swapped music, liked what they heard, and added “Project” to the name to make it a duo. In December 2013, aged 16 and 17, they signed with the Belgian powerhouse label Dirty Workz, also home to Da Tweekaz. Both later graduated from Utrecht’s Herman Brood Academy in 2017, part of the first wave of hardstyle producers with formal dance-production schooling.

The psy-style signature

Sub Zero Project’s fingerprint is the “psy-style” kick: a tighter, rounder, psytrance-influenced attack that cuts through a mix differently from the classic hardstyle punch: rawstyle aggression with an alien sheen. It proved contagious in every sense: their 2019 debut album ‘Contagion’, led by ‘The Contagion’, framed their rise exactly that way, and the psy-adjacent sound they pushed has echoed through the genre’s new school ever since.

Modern mainstage royalty

Today Sub Zero Project sit in hardstyle’s contemporary front rank, headlining the scene’s biggest events and collaborating across its spectrum, from raw peers like Warface to euphoric acts like Sound Rush. With over 230,000 Spotify followers they are among the most-streamed current hardstyle acts, and their release pace keeps the radar busy.

Every new Sub Zero Project release lands on the Hardstyle Release Radar the day it drops. The full tracked catalogue is listed above.