The Beginning Of Doomcore

The story, the beginning, of Doomcore is synonymous with one label. At the beginning, everything Doomcore was PCP, and PCP was everything Doomcore. They created the whole genre. They started it. Listen to the labels at that time; you will see there is not much that actually sounds similar to the things PCP pulled off back then.

Sure, there were other tracks to be found; and you might find even further ones; "The Aftermath" on the adrenalin records EP; or some of the Sound Of Rome works, to name some. But, as I said, at first Doomcore was virtually the same as PCP.

PCP set the foundation of the sound with some of their best records. With the cold rush records. with the The Mover outings. with the cold metallic sound of Mescalinum United. Techno, at its beginning, was dark. But PCP took the darkness even further. They had the idea to create technotic, or pounding, 4/4 drums and combine them with lush, sweeping synth pads, rave signals, dark choir outings. In a time when everyone seemed to focus mostly on the groove and beat of Techno, PCP shifted the focus to the emotion, the setting of a track.

So that was it. The Doomcore formula had been found. The dark dancefloor came into existence. and from that, the sound evolved even more.

PCP's outings became more intricate as time moved on, too. The reduced sound of the first mover EP later gave way to the complex melodic systems and spacious sounds of some of Miro's work (the Purple Moon, the XTC Express...).

At this point of history, Doomcore was more or less a rarity. There were dedicated Doomcore fans and doom supporters, but there were only very few of them. The core group was members of the Dutch-influenced Gabber sounds, old school Techno heads who had "grown up" (at least Techno wise) with PCP, and the experimental underground scenes of Techno in the web surrounding the c8 collective, which to a large part was composed of PCP fans (those scenes later gave rises to genres such as Breakcore or Frenchcore).

That there was only one real label (or rather, label family) for Doomcore didn't help with the spread of Doomcore, of course. This changed by the mid 90s. Other labels dedicated to the Doomcore sound came into being. The most important were the crossbones tree of label, and Fifth Era. Smaller labels and projects arose too, such as Black Blood and his Frontline Of Sound label (still highly underrated), and even more obscure labels.

Skip to the present day. The situation couldn't be better for Doomcore. Doomcore is on the rise, and finally getting recognition and appreciation by people outside the small Doomcore circle, too. Now we have whole events dedicated to Doomcore with several acts (an impossibility in the 90s), and the Doomcore scene seems to grow.

While this also leads to the danger of commercialization of the sound, I think it will be a long time till this happens, and we still have plenty of time to enjoy the new Doomcore outings. Especially interesting to me are the large number of producers who are now interested in the Doomcore sound and make great creations, on the internet and elsewhere.

The times are good for Doomcore. Let's enjoy them.