Review: Hardcore at Sea (6 August 2017)

Massive apology for this being so late but here it goes! On 6 August 2017 BKJN Events (stands for better you don’t come lol) took over Bloemendaal beach with an epic hardcore festival.

My festival day started out as it almost always does with a QSA (if you don’t know by this point, QSA is a group of American/Canadian hardcore and hardstyle ravers) pre-party. The pre-party this time consisted of a beach picnic with lots of wine, snacks, and galaxy stickers. I had to leave the picnic early to catch my friend Para Italia open the main stage at 3, luckily our picnic was literally outside the venue. I get to the line mention I’m on the guest list and they direct me to guest list table, however, me being an idiot walked way too far. I get to what I think is the entrance give them my name, get let in, and given a wristband. I look around and immediately am confused. I hear deep house playing, see people laying down on chair bed things, see no one I know, Para Italia is nowhere in sight, and no one is wearing hardcore clothes. WHERE AM I?!?! I somehow make it around to the correct club where MC No-ID asked me why I had a wristband for the bar next store. Went to the wrong club! Ooooops!

It was my first time at Hardcore at Sea and it is definitely a festival I am adding to my list for next year and suggest that everyone else do the same! The venue is perfectly situated on the beach with three stages: main stage, uptempo, and rawstyle, multiple bars, with a great sound system. One of the main highlights of the day for me was seeing my good friend Rob Gee play and as always represent the American hardcore scene. Although all the sets at the main stage and uptempo stages were great (I never made it to the rawstyle stage, sorry!) some of my favorites were: Sickest Squad, Partyraiser, System Overload vs. Repix, Chaotic Hostility, Rob Gee (duh) and Angernoizer!

The day went by quickly as always however we were in for quite a surprise. The main stage closed with an epic firework end show by €LIT€ live who correct me if I’m wrong but I think was Chaotic Hostility and DRS. After the end show I began to head for the lockers when I noticed that the uptempo room was still going on. I figured I would catch the end of Hyrule War vs Sprinky and then find my friends. However to my surprise it was not the end of the set nor the end of the night, we got an extra hour! This literally never happens to me so that was the perfect cherry on top of a wonderful sunny beachside day and an end to my festival season! See everyone in the fall!