Aggrotech

What it is

German club floors around 2001 wanted something harder than dark electro and got it. Combichrist, Grendel, Agonoize and Suicide Commando took the four to the floor from trance, the distortion from rhythmic noise and the vocal from death metal, then ran the whole thing at 140. Hocico in Mexico City had arrived somewhere similar from a different direction. Hellektro is the other name, coined half as an insult and adopted anyway. The construction is formulaic and unapologetic about it: a sixteenth hat pattern at double the apparent tempo, a kick that gallops onto the a of the beat, a supersaw riff, and a vocal pitch-shifted down and distorted until the words go.

What it sounds like

Loud and even. The kick is clipped flat and sits around minus five with no dynamic range left, so the whole record feels pinned. Hats are a bright 909 sample running sixteenths, mixed high enough to read as a separate rhythm. The snare is an electric snare layered with a clap and a short noise burst, gated at 200ms. The riff is seven or eight detuned saws through a resonant low-pass, sidechained hard to the kick. The vocal is shifted down five to seven semitones, distorted, and sometimes doubled with a clean take underneath so a few words survive. Almost nothing is left in the sub below 45Hz.

Key elements

• The gallop kickFour on the floor plus a sixteenth on the a of 2 and the a of 4. That extra hit is what separates this from hard trance and from techno, and it is about as much as the grid can carry.
• Double-time hatsSixteenths with beats at 78, the ands at 72 and each e and a at 50, with one and a bar traded for an open hat. They read as twice the tempo against a kick that reads as 140.
• Distorted vocalPitched down five to seven semitones and driven into a waveshaper. Intelligibility is not a design goal, which is a choice the genre made early and kept.
• Supersaw riffSeven detuned saws in harmonic minor, played in sixteenths, sidechained to the kick by six to eight decibels. Borrowed wholesale from trance and pointed somewhere unpleasant.
• Clipped everythingKick, snare and riff all hit a clipper before the bus. The absence of dynamic range is the genre's actual signature, more than any pattern is.

How to get them

• KickA short 909 or Hardstyle-adjacent kick, decay 150ms, high-passed at 50Hz, then a hard clipper taking six to nine decibels. Put a second clipper after the drum bus and let them stack.
• Program the gallopKicks on all four beats at 118 to 122, then one more on the a of 2 and the a of 4 at 88. Shorten those two by 40ms so they push rather than land.
• HatsA 909 closed hat on each sixteenth, with one a bar traded for an open hat. Beats at 78, ands at 72, e and a at 50, then a transient shaper to sharpen the attack and a high shelf of three decibels at 8kHz.
• Vocal chainPitch down six semitones, then a tube or fuzz emulation at 40 percent wet, then a de-esser, then compression at 12:1. Layer an undistorted take twelve decibels lower for consonants.
• RiffSeven saws detuned by 18 cents, low-passed at 4kHz with a slow filter envelope, sidechained to the kick with a 90ms release. Write it in harmonic minor and stay off the root.
• Accept the ceilingMix into a limiter from the start and check the result on a phone speaker. This music is designed for a system running flat out, and mixing it with headroom makes it sound apologetic.

Reference points

Combichrist, Hocico, Suicide Commando, Grendel, Agonoize, Amduscia, and the Out of Line, NoiTekk and Metropolis labels. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.