Wave III Hardtrance

I've (admittedly, somewhat belatedly) gotten into some of the Wave III hardtrance acts.  If you recall (or if you don't, either one) I think hardtrance comes in three recognizable waves.

• Wave I is from the mid-90s, has a high tempo, utilizes a lot of acid bass lines, etc. 
• Wave II is from the very late 90s and is really centered on the first half of the first decade of the 2000s.  The tempo got slower, the build-ups and drops became more important, acid remains, but new bass line types, like the rolling bass of S.H.O.K.K., for instance, and the early reverse bass that later became a major feature of hardstyle.  The kicks get really exaggerated.  DJ Scot Project type work, including his many remixes and his Arome project are the best typified examples of this type of hardtrance.
• Wave III is people who came along later; mostly within the last decade.  This is still lower BPM than Wave I, but the intensity is ramped up, and a lot of hybridization with other styles like hard house, hardstyle, tech trance, hardcore, aggrotech, acidcore, and just about every other type of harddance style is often present, although naturally it still has to lean in towards hardtrance, or it would be considered something else.  Newer techniques like side-chaining and stuff get used a lot more; all in all, I'd say that there's a fuzzier sound to most of the work here compared to Wave II, although that's not necessarily a given.  A lot of the artists don't necessarily consider themselves hardtrance artists, though—they're simply harddance artists, and they slip easily in and out of stuff that sounds like hardtrance, hardstyle, subground, or who knows what else.  Some of the iconic artists of this wave would be like Steve Hill, DJ W, Noizy Boy, Nomad, Dean Zone, The Sixth Sense, Nostic, etc.  

Anyway, I bring this up, because the Wave III is more dispersed and less focused on fewer "big names" like Wave II was.  This means that I sometimes have a vague awareness of an artist because I have a few tracks, or collaborations or remixes by them, but then I find out that they've got this whole huge body of work that I'm missing.

This just happened to me with Noizy Boy, Shock:Force and DJ W, for instance, and it happened several months ago with The Sixth Sense and Nostic.  There's probably a ton more guys that this can still potentially happen to me with, so it may be an ongoing issue.

Anyway, here's a few samples of this stuff: Wave III hardtrance.

And, of course, I'm still discovering lots of Wave II stuff that I hadn't had before, like most of the work of Ralph Novell, DJ Dean and K90, for instance, both of whom I only recently grabbed.

I sometimes tell people tongue in cheek that there's a lot of different types of EDM.  My daughter, for instance, listens to tropical house, which sounds like the laid back walk on the beach under a rising moon after a nice dinner and relaxed party.  The stuff I listen to is so intense it'll melt your face off and kick your butt so hard that three days later you'll still be pooping out pieces of its shoe.  This characterization is really pretty true for a lot of this Wave III hardtrance that is a fusion of trance, hardstyle, acid and more all just going freakin' crazy on your stereo.

One guy who was talking to me about my music called it death metal.  Uh... no.  The only metal of any kind that I listen to at all is the campy 80s stuff that's probably more properly known as the harder edge of hair rock.  I do think, though, that much of what I listen to can be called the electronic music equivalent of metal in many respects.  Hard, brutal, masculine, intense, you listen to too much of it at once, you might find yourself itching to go pick a fist fight with someone.  Awesome stuff.

I will own up to a lot of sameyness to it, though.  I've been going through in particular a lot of Noizy Boy today while sending emails and working and stuff, and while all of the tracks I have are great, I'd be hard-pressed to tell one from the other.