The Dark Horror

The Dark Horror took uptempo (hardcore’s most extreme wing) and gave it something it wasn’t supposed to have: hooks.

Brussels joins the polder

Uptempo is an overwhelmingly Dutch story, which makes The Dark Horror’s rise from Brussels notable in itself. Converted by hardcore events and a diet of fast, hard music, he started producing and playing in 2016, and within a few years stood among the genre’s defining acts, with over 75,000 Spotify followers and one of the strongest popularity scores in the whole hardcore family.

Saw kicks and singalongs

His trademark is the collision at the heart of every Dark Horror track: brutal “zaagkicks” (saw kicks, named for their serrated mid-range) against melodies catchy enough to hum. Albums like ‘Artificial Intoxication’ and ‘The Second Dose’ package the formula at scale. And around 2019 he became one of the artists pushing uptempo’s kick design somewhere new, experimenting with punchless, pitched and low-frequency kicks that broke the genre’s own rules.

The face of fast

Alongside godfather Partyraiser and peers like Deadly Guns and Spitnoise, The Dark Horror fronts the wave that turned uptempo from B-side experiment into festival mainstages, proof the fastest corner of hard dance can also be its most streamable.

Every new release from The Dark Horror lands on the Uptempo Release Radar the day it hits Spotify. The full tracked catalogue is listed above.