Gabba, Rotterdam Hardcore
4 - Major
Hardcore
Acid House, Acid Techno, Belgian Techno, Hardcore Techno, New Beat
Dutch Artcore, Nu Style Gabber
Bouncy Techno, Deathchant, Digital Hardcore, Evilcore House, Frenchcore, Hardvapour, Mashcore, Speedcore, Terrorcore
Gabber is perhaps the quintessential form of hardcore. Fast, dark, aggressive, and iconic, its sound would go on to inform huge swathes of the hardcore tree. Gabber isn't one of those genres where you can cleanly point to its origins in a few artists combining a couple sounds; it's a melting pot, pulling together years of developments that span house, techno, early hardcore, and even industrial. While its origins are impossible to singularly pin down, it's universally agreed that gabber comes from Rotterdam. Emerging from the same murky acid techno pools Marc Trauner dredged hardcore techno and doomcore out of a couple years earlier, gabber took those noisy grooves, sped them up, and melded in influence from contemporary European rave - particularly belgian techno and new beat, two closely related styles that inspired the use of rave stabs and blaring synth melodies in hardcore.
It's not hard to see why gabber was so striking for the Dutch youth, as its sound remains intense and exciting even today. Gabber was the first real fast style of hardcore; where early hardcore techno was content to remain in that 140-ish techno sweet spot, and doomcore soon made a name for itself as an absolute crawlfest of a genre, gabber decided to take things up a notch, ranging from a leisurely 160 or so BPM to a facemelting 220. Speed wasn't the only thing gabber brought to the table, though. It also brought along its iconic kick drum. By taking the kick from the TR-909 and other drum machines used frequently in techno and distorting the everloving hell out of it, gabber producers were able to create something wicked: a kick drum so distorted, it was closer to a square wave. Gabber was arguably the first genre of electronic music where producers had to tune the pitch of their kick to the track, its fat, bouncy sound proved addictive.
Soon after developing in the Rotterdam nightclub circuit, gabber went international, spreading throughout the rest of Europe with the help of hardcore pioneer Marc Trauner and to the US via influential DJ, producer, and Industrial Strength Records founder Lenny Dee. Gabber went from a niche genre to the face of rave, spawning legendary festivals such as Thunderdome and bringing hardcore to the mainstream. With it came a distinct subculture, populated by skinheads who wore tracksuits and Nikes and had very strong opinions about football. While the subculture became iconic to many, particularly as one of the Netherlands' first homegrown subcultures, things soon took a downturn. The problem was that while gabber artists were generally antifascist and anti-racism, and many of its central figures were black DJs and producers, the genre had managed to pick up a small neo-Nazi following regardless. Producers and label runners were quick to speak out, pumping out a number of tracks explicitly decrying Naziism and even turning those antifascist sentiments into central parts of the genre's barnding, but the media pounced on it anyways, and combined with the genre's association with football hooliganism it gave gabber a bad reputation in Europe that contributed to a general decline in popularity by the late 90s.
While the oldschool gabber sound laid largely dormant by the turn of the century, its practioners were still around and spread in a variety of directions. Some stayed in the family, jumping onto niche but familiar offshoots like speedcore and terrorcore that enjoyed strong cult followings. Others moved on to bouncy techno, a derivative developed in Scotland and later ported back to the Netherlands that served as one of several important predecessors to oldschool happy hardcore. Fans of gabber music found their way into a few offshoots that have largely sustained prominent fanbases ever since. The most popular of these is undoubtedly nu style, a subgenre of gabber that features slower grooves, a fatter and more modern sound, and a much more prominent focus on synth melodies. These two genres have been extremely cross-influential ever since, and nu style has since eclipsed oldschool gabber's popularity, becoming synonymous with hardcore itself in many parts of Europe. In many ways, gabber has stuck around, despite the sound itself having died off many years ago. It still sees occasional revival by nostalgic fans and producers, and its ethos remains influential even today.
Fuckin Hostile - "Fuckin Hostile" from Fuckin Hostile (1993).
Lenny Dee & Rob Gee - "Spontaneous Combustion" from Thunderdome VII - Injected With Poison (1994).
Delta 9 - "Headstrong" from Disco Inferno (1996).
The Prophet & Omar Santana - "Power Pill" from Power Pill (1997).
Phuture Doom - "Doom Terror Corps" from Phuture Doom (2013).