Album: Hardstyle Volume 13
Label: Blutonium Records
Genre: Hardstyle
Released: 2007 - November
Moe Rating:

Blutonium Boy. Two words that can strike fear into the heart of any hardstyle enthusiast. Blutonium Boy represents the epitome of terrible, over-played, generic and boring hardstyle tracks.

Blutonium Boy presents, however, are three words words with a slightly different meaning. Blutonium Boy presents has connotations that it might actually have a slight chance of being a half decent album. Blutonium Boy presents Hardstyle 13 is just that, a slight chance. Combined with the fact that half the album is actually done by Warmduscher, and you’ve doubled your chances right there. Add a sprinkling of unique, great sounding hardstyle and you’ve got yourself one delicious hardstyle compilation.

The album contains two CDs. The first is mixed by Blutonium Boy, the second is mixed by Warmduscher, and by some wild coincidence, the better tracks are mostly on the second CD.

The Blutonium Boy CD has more of an old-school feel to it, with tracks that have a more classic hardstyle format, and are a little more obscure. Saying that it sounds like classic hardstyle, doesn’t mean that they’re old tracks, as most of the songs on Hardstyle Volume 13 are relatively new. This first CD is also full of Blutonium Boy tracks, so have your finger on the skip button.. just in case. The Warmduscher CD contains some of the bigger names, A-Lusion, Noisecontrollers, Southstylerz, and Headhunterz, and the tracks are slightly more aged, but a great selection nonetheless.

The tracks are melody based, and sound great and original. Like most new hardstyle, there is no reverse bass, but lots of nice, slamming kicks and nifty sounding synths. As far as I can tell, none of the tracks suffer from clapstyle syndrome, i.e., the overabundance of clap samples in a song (often lasts longer than a minute).

Overall, a surprisingly good compilation, which gives a rich, fulfilling feeling after listening. It would probably be a 5 star review if there was no Blutonium Boy, but hey, what’re you gunna do?