Various – Thunderdome - The X-Mas Edition

Can someone tell me if ID&T ever made a tape of this?. At a thrift store I once saw a cassette version it didnt look like a bootleg, the inlay was high quality and the whole thing looked official. I didnt buy it though since it was 15 euros

I find it odd how only Holy Jungle Mess is available on streaming services (for now at least), wonder why is that?

On face value, this looks like another cheesy Christmas compilation cashing in on the festive season, many musicians have done it so Thunderdome/ID&T thought they would give it a go. But the most surprising thing of all here is that most of the tracks are really good! I mean they all have Christmas songs woven in but done exceptionally well, in my opinion. I think the main reason its mostly succeeds is the strong and serious nature of 1994 Hardcore Gabber (balancing out the Xmas happiness) from The Netherlands and some outstanding contributions from .

What You Can Do For Others is possibly DJ Sim's first solo outing, an upbeat number which takes samples from Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

Brooklyn X-Mas is a very solid track by Lenny Dee and Ralphie Dee where half the track is "Hip Hop Terror", it jumps over 200 BPM with samples from Cold Chillin' Christmas by Cold Chillin' Juice Crew in 1988. It sounds a bit odd, but because its different, that makes it memorable.

The next three songs: Frosty's Dance, Silent Night and Gloria In Excelsis Deo have a more German Rave flavour which probably explains why they are so damn good! Silent Night has a more laidback serious feel to it while Gloria In Excelsis Deo has the most infectious Christmas synth riff, silly but lots of fun!

What sort of Gangster shit would a Northpole Gangster actually do? You'd think it would be way too cold to engage in criminal activities. :P

Like Frosty's Dance, also by Critical Mass, Let's Be Jolly has some head nodding frantic paced synth stabs that would sound great in a normal Gabber track.

In the early 2000's, Scott Brown mentioned that Megaloid came about when ID&T asked him to submit a Christmas track which was in the middle of 1994. For many years I found Megaloid to be one of the most boring tunes Scott ever made, sounding like a Scotchman track rejected by Combined Forces. Also for the longest time I wondered what the song had to do with the Christmas, listen to it. But I figured it out, if you listen carefully you can hear sleigh bells underneath the beat! Probably a coincidence, but, I wonder if Megaloid inspired this: https://discogs.cinepelis.org/master/621817-Various-Evolution-Records-Presents-A-Happy-Christmas-Compilation. Or was it the other way around..... Megaloid is a slang term for something so big it's ridiculous.

How good is Holy Jungle Mess! This is an unusual but throughly enjoyable Breakbeat track by Marc Acardipane. Catchy dark stabs, rolling Amens and a nicely interwoven X-mas melody. Once again it shows you P can have a crack at any style of music and produce great stuff. I can imagine the Hardcore listener would have found Holy Jungle Mess to be a weird change in direction. But.....

How bad is Euter Of Vienna! Up until recently I ALWAYS skipped over this song. But learning about Ilsa Gold's more comedic approach to Techno music, it makes more sense. I listen to it now more as an oddity. Euter is the German word for Udder: that's right, Udder Of Vienna! A̶u̶s̶t̶r̶a̶l̶i̶a̶n̶s̶ Austrians, is there a joke we're missing? :)

The Dreamteam were an integral part of Thunderdome and ID&T at the time, and all four are present here. Possibly the first time the term, Wappie, was used. The track has some really hard kickdrums for 1994 and the second half has some psycho drum rolls! It seems like Buzzy's humour plus the X-Mas cheese with some powerful Gabber. In contrast, Christmas Can Be A Bitch Sometimes is a more serious affair, but done a bit like his tune Frequencies. Rob Gee and Gizmo provide an amusing entry with some demented vocals. You can tell which parts are produced by Rob and the more synth stab orientated material by Gizmo. Considering the things they were doing at the time, A White X-Mas probably doesn't mean snow...... The Dano track is a slower Dance track and includes a sample of Ring My Bell either from Anita Ward or possibly Collette! The track is faded out meaning Dano probably still has an extended version of the song. Both tunes by The Prophet are good hard Gabber tunes with faithful Christmas songs sprinkled in that start and finish the compilation. I wonder how his younger Hardstyle fans would react to these tracks!

The Simstim song is also quite decent, the main synth melody has an underwater sound to it and the sharp piano keys are a bonus.

In the immortal words of Vanessa Williams, I've saved the best for last. If there was a song that nailed the concept of Hardcore Techno Christmas crossovers, the winner goes to The Silverbelly's - Santa Comes Tonight!! It's a beautiful Gabber track wrapped up in Christmas paper. Highly emotional and bags of energy courtesy of the legendary 3 Steps Ahead! Also that pounding chainsaw riff in the background is just lovely. Amazing! Rest In Peace Bug Slowbizzy.

I like the Thunderdome On Tour dates, wondering what those parties were like. I always thought that Hooligan football long sleeve looked cool. What was in the 50 CD promotion boxes that you could win? Despite the Christmas theme, this is an entertaining Thunderdome CD that may surprise you.

Utterly over the top Dutch ad for this CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi3uvSRuFc
A ID&T Christmas party: https://imgur.com/a/sOmZLg8

The very first Thuderdome album what i've heard. That's why i fell in love instantly with Thunderdome and hardcore... I was 16 years old, it was a brand new sound to me, it dragged me and this love burns still, pretty close to 40.

As mentioned by Joseph_S, the P song is a jungle track sampling Renegade's "Terrorist" and DMS + The Boneman X's "Sweet Vibrations", with some extra vocals from MC GQ taken from an old Hype tune. For a one-off song in a Thunderdome compilation, it's pretty good.

The first time I heard this I said “this sucks and sounds commercial”, but after hearing it a couple of times more I realised that it isn’t bad as I thought. Actually, I itted after that it’s pretty cool! We find some Thunderdome artists (some under a different alias) sampling some of the most famous Christmas carols.

Some favourites are Gabba Bells, Santa Comes Tonight and Christmas Can Be A Bitch Sometimes. Rob Gee “sings” very well on "A White X-Mas". Scott Brown’s track is the only track which doesn’t have to do with X-Mas, it has no Xmas carols sampled. Sounds like a mediocre unreleased elsewhere track by him. P's track is surprisngly a drum’n’bass track. The track by Ilsa Gold ruins the flow unfortunately!

Nice to have on the shelves in your Gabber collection ;)

A priceless Thunderdome item. A nice xmas edition so many other compilation tried (and miserably failed) to imitate. It's quite old, so don't expect techie Hardcore, but basic old Gabber. Still, it has many nice titles... and my personally x-mas favourite:
Santa Comes Tonight by The SilverBelly's