Various – Thunderdome - Chapter XXII

Thunderdome 21 & 22 was to me The Drip Too Much .

First : Too many new unknown artists
Secondly : The sudden poor quality of the packaging from a Double Plastic Jewelcase we were used to it has turned into a cheap hard-paper digipack
Third : The bad quality of the CD's on Thunderdome 22 recordings were made very quickly like they only cared for the money
Fourth : Each track aren't great and aren't memorisable also not found in many other compilations . Means alot to me that Thunderdome were out of ideas

Like i said in another review from another Thunderdome compilation.

The Thunderdome series started very good surely Thunderdome 1,2,3,4&5 which were pure Rave and some tracks on Thunderdome 4 were already Speedcore ( later heard on Terrordrome German hardcore/speedcore/bunker Nordcore GMBH ) . Thunderdome 6,7,8,9,10 sounded fresh back in the day had new sounds and the happy hardcore feel . Thunderdome 11,12,13,14,15 were to me their last best compilations Thunderdome 15 started slowly to go downhill it was comfirmed with Thunderdome 16 was one of the most boring of all time along with Thunderdome 12 , Thunderdome 17 saved it had many great tracks but then since Thunderdome 18&19 both of them had less than ten enjoyable tracks , Thunderdome 20 signed the end of the Thunderdome series it was boring offered no new materials anymore .

Yes the guys from ID&T made great releases but many of them were easy cash grab compilations made without ideas . Easy example Thunderdome & Earthquake were both the same hardcore/gabber ( of course not the same titles but alas ) they had an Happy Hardcore series and even a Trance/Hard-Trance series with Hypnotrance in 1994 . But yes in 1998/99 it was clearly the end of the golden era of Dutch hardcore/gabber is why German hardcore/gabber/speedcore took over and gave new materials , guess the guys from the ID&T family seems afraid to dare something different ??

I think the cd cover was based on the Wes Craven's movie "Shocker" from 1989.

Worst Thunderdome ever in of compilation production. A lot of tracks seem to miss a beat at the beginning or end and track volumes are not equilibrated. I mean listen track 1-18 and 1-19 – were the makers deaf or what? It seems the release was compiled very quickly or randomly and the package was not finalised. The 2002 reissue didn’t fix the volume problems either but again no reissue fixed anything back then, not even blatant cover errors.

As we know 20 Hardcore tracks won’t fit on a CD and like most CDs of that period they had to be edited but the progression here is no good at all, most tracks just don’t fit one after the other.

Compilation was released in the fall of ’98 when the scene had almost reached the lowest point, in 1999. Trance and Hard House had taken over the world dance scene and the Hardcore scene also took influences from those sounds. A new style of Hardcore labelled ‘New Style’ had emerged. While some of that new style is evident here compilation is mostly a ‘good’ old Gabber CD at heart. There ARE great tracks but most can’t be enjoyed properly due to either sound issues or random track edits.

Volume 21 is much and much better if you ask me and no sound issues luckily.