New Rawstyle Releases

Rawstyle is hardstyle stripped of its sweetness: the same 150 BPM foundation and reverse bass, but built around brutally distorted kicks, aggressive “screech” leads and dark, ominous atmospheres. Where euphoric hardstyle reaches for singalong moments, rawstyle reaches for impact. It is the sound of the harder stages at Defqon.1 and of festivals dedicated entirely to it. Rawstyle vs euphoric hardstyle breaks the split down in full.

A response to euphoria

Rawstyle took shape in the Netherlands in the early 2010s as a counter-movement to the increasingly melodic direction of mainstream hardstyle. Labels like Minus Is More, A2 Records and Spoontech Records gave the harder sound a home, and producers such as Crypsis, Zatox and B-Front laid the groundwork. By the mid-2010s rawstyle had its own identity, its own rosters and its own festival slots, most visibly at Supremacy, the festival built specifically around raw.

The sound: kick design as an art form

Rawstyle turned the hardstyle kick into a competitive discipline. Producers layer, distort and pitch their kicks until a single hit carries as much identity as a lead melody, and drops are often carried by kick rolls and screeches alone. Vocal samples lean dark (science-fiction and horror cinema are common sources), and melodies, where they appear, serve tension rather than release. The xtra raw offshoot pushes all of this to its extreme, while rawphoric swings back toward melody without giving up the kicks.

The artists carrying raw

Radical Redemption and Warface are among the subgenre’s defining names, alongside D-Sturb, Act of Rage and crossover heavyweights Sub Zero Project. A strong new generation keeps the scene moving: Anderex, Aversion, Rejecta, Killshot, Mutilator and Krowdexx all release at a relentless pace, which is exactly what this page is for.

Where to hear new rawstyle first

Rawstyle releases flow into the Hardstyle Release Radar alongside the rest of the hardstyle spectrum, updated daily, and the genre’s biggest current tracks surface in the Hardstyle Top 100. Every individual rawstyle release we track is listed above. New drops land here the day they hit Spotify. For the parent genre’s full story, see the hardstyle page.