When Atari Teenage Riot assaulted the hitcharts and festivals, digital hardcore had a short peak and the word “digital hardcore” was in the mouth and on the pages of everyone and everything in the music press. Personally I think that Atari Teenage Riot is almost the most boring DHR act, but he, you can’t have everything! When the novelty of ATR was gone, but band lost popularity and also did digital hardcore music. It seems that the scene never really grew much outside the Berlin (ger) region and nowadays you have to search for cds and don’t even have to think about concerts/parties/whatever when you don’t live in Berlin. This is sad, because digital hardcore has left it’s traces, but it seems that a band not on the label, cannot be part of the scene, so nowadays you have a few small scenes with extreme techno.
Anyway, this was the first DHR compilation with almost only great tracks. Back then they mostly were very original and refreshing and the bands hardly sounded alike. ATR themselves are on it, but also Alec Empire alone, Hannin Elias alone, Ec8or, Sonic Subjunkies, Schizuo and Christoph de Babalon. The last contributed two brilliant, but not very extreme drum and bass tracks and later released two not too great cds. Further bands that never really came further than the DHR compilations: Killout Thrash and DJ Bleed.
As said, most tracks are great and this compilation is definately THE digital hardcore classic.