Zatox

Hardstyle’s raw turn had several architects, and Zatox is the Italian one. Gerardo Roschini from Tivoli, near Rome, spent years producing before 2009 lit the fuse: from then on the hits came in rapid succession, hard-edged and unapologetic, and the scene started using his name and ‘raw’ in the same sentence.

It’s a raw world

Where the Bologna school of Technoboy and Tuneboy polished hardstyle’s groove, Zatox stripped it for parts: darker kicks, meaner screeches, rawstyle before the word settled. The wider world noticed: in 2011 he entered the DJ Mag Top 100 at #47, rare territory for an artist this uncompromising.

Wild Motherfuckers and the Italian circle

With fellow Italian Tatanka he formed Wild Motherfuckers, the gleefully unserious duo behind ‘Fother Mucker’, ‘Natural Born Raver’, ‘Wild Wild West’ and ‘Alarma’: 18 shared credits in HDRR’s tracking. His collaboration sheet crosses every border of the harder styles: TNT, Activator, Brennan Heart, The R3belz.

Output that never slows

HDRR tracks more than 240 Zatox releases since 2007, and the newest lead the catalogue: ‘New Shit’ (2025), ‘Diablo’ (2024), ‘Dopamin’ and ‘Nobody Likes’ (2025), with ‘New Style’ and ‘Atlantis’ carrying the run into 2026. Nearly two decades in, raw’s Italian godfather is still shipping like a newcomer.

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