You searched for how to mix hardstyle, and the first thing to accept is that the usual mixing playbook does not apply at 150 to 160 BPM. In most genres the kick is one element among many. In hardstyle the distorted kick is the track: it fills the sub, the mids and the top simultaneously, and everything else negotiates for the space that is left. Raw or euphoric, the problems are the same ones: a kick that fights itself, a screech that tears at 3 kHz, a breakdown that sounds bigger than the climax. This guide works through each of them with concrete numbers, in the order a hardstyle mixdown actually wants.
The hardstyle kick is a full-spectrum event: level it first
A finished hardstyle kick occupies three zones at once. The tail carries the sub between 40 and 60 Hz, the distorted body, the tok, dominates 200 to 800 Hz, and the crunch on top lives between 2 and 8 kHz. That is the entire spectrum claimed by a single sound. You are not slotting a kick into a mix. You are building a mix around a kick.
So start the mixdown with the kick alone on the master, before a single other fader moves. Set its level, then pull up two or three released tracks in your subgenre and match your kick to theirs at the same playback volume. You want it within 1 dB of the reference, because every later decision, lead level, sidechain depth, limiter drive, inherits this one. The detailed shaping moves, where to notch the tok and how to keep the punch through distortion, are covered in the guide on how to EQ a kick drum. If you want an objective read on whether your kick level and low end actually match released hardstyle, upload a bounce to TrackSensei and check the frequency-balance section before you mix anything else on top.
Hardstyle usually has no bassline: the kick tail is the bass
This is the biggest difference from neighboring genres. In a techno mixdown you spend most of your low-end effort negotiating between a kick and a separate bassline. Hardstyle skips the negotiation: the pitched, distorted tail of the kick is the bass. It holds the sub from 40 to 60 Hz on every beat, which means the tail has to be tuned to the key of the track, not just an unpitched thump. A tail a semitone off against the lead reads as a mix problem even though it is a tuning problem.
When a track does add a separate sub line or a screeching off-beat bass, it cannot coexist with the kick at full level. Sidechain it hard from the kick: 6 to 10 dB of gain reduction with a fast attack and a release timed so the bass returns just before the next hit. That is two to three times deeper than the 2 to 4 dB you would use in techno or house, and it is correct here, because the pumping is part of the genre's sound rather than a side effect to hide.
Tame the screech with dynamic EQ between 500 Hz and 5 kHz
The euphoric lead or raw screech lives in the most sensitive part of human hearing, roughly 500 Hz to 5 kHz, and it gets there through heavy distortion that throws up unpredictable resonances. A static EQ cut flattens the lead on the notes that did not resonate. Use a dynamic EQ instead: sweep for the two or three frequencies that jump out, usually between 2 and 4 kHz on a screech, and set each band to duck 2 to 4 dB only when that resonance fires. The lead keeps its aggression and stops hurting.
Two more rules keep the lead section clean. First, pitch the screech to the key of the track, the same rule as the kick tail. A screech is a pitched instrument, and an out-of-key one sounds like harshness no EQ can fix. Second, make leads wide but verify them in mono. Stack detuned layers, spread them hard left and right, then collapse the mix to mono: if the lead loses more than a little level, the layers are phase-cancelling and the big-room PA will punish you for it.
Mix the breakdown like trance, then strip the climax bare
Hardstyle arrangements alternate between kick-driven climaxes and melodic breakdowns, and the two sections want opposite mixing. The breakdown is where the vocals, pads and atmosphere live, and it mixes like a trance record: wide stereo, long reverbs, a vocal sitting on top with 2 to 3 dB of presence around 3 to 5 kHz, emotional rather than aggressive. Give it the space, because the kick is absent and nothing is competing for the spectrum.
The climax then strips almost everything away. At the drop you are down to kick plus lead, sometimes a single off-beat element, and that is not laziness, it is the format. Every pad or vocal tail you let bleed into the climax steals energy from the kick. Mute aggressively: the contrast between a lush breakdown and a dry, brutal climax is what the hardstyle genre standards are built on, and TrackSensei's genre targets measure exactly that drop-section energy.
Automate the contrast: the drop hits mono-tight and dry
The transition between those two worlds is a mixing move, not just an arrangement move. Build the tension over 4 to 8 bars with a riser and a snare roll that accelerates into the drop, and while they run, automate the mix itself: pull the stereo width of the master or the lead bus down toward mono, ride the reverb sends to zero, and high-pass the riser upward so the low end is empty the instant before impact. Then the kick lands into silence below 200 Hz and the drop feels twice as loud without a single dB of extra level.
Leave it dry after the drop too. A two-second breakdown tail smearing into the first four kicks blurs the punch you just set up. Cut the tails dead on the downbeat, keep the climax mono-tight for at least 8 bars, and reintroduce width only when the arrangement opens up again.
Hardstyle masters land at -4 to -6 LUFS, but mix with headroom
Hardstyle is among the loudest music being released. Commercial masters sit between -4 and -6 LUFS integrated, far beyond the -7 to -9 LUFS of most club genres, and clipping the kick into the limiter is standard practice rather than a mistake: a clipper shaving the kick's peaks lets the limiter run 3 to 4 dB hotter without audible pumping.
None of that belongs in the mixdown. Mix with peaks around -6 dBFS and no limiter on the master, because a mixdown that needs the limiter to sound right falls apart when the mastering push adds another 6 dB of density. Get the kick-to-lead balance correct at headroom, then let the clipper and limiter do their violent work on a mix that can take it.
Reference at matched loudness, one frequency band at a time
Every section above ends in the same verification step, so make it a method. Drop one or two released tracks in your subgenre on a muted reference channel, then match loudness before comparing: a track mastered to -5 LUFS will beat your -10 LUFS mixdown on impression alone, so pull the reference down until both play equally loud. Only then is the comparison about balance instead of volume.
Then compare band by band instead of all at once. Filter both tracks to below 100 Hz and A/B the kick tail weight. Band-pass 200 to 800 Hz and compare the tok density. Listen above 5 kHz for crunch and air. Each band gives you one specific decision, where a full-range comparison only gives you a vague feeling that the reference is better.
The honest limit of that method is your room and your ears, both of which lie most in the sub region where the hardstyle kick does its work. If you want the comparison in numbers instead, upload your mixdown to TrackSensei and read the results against the hardstyle genre targets. It measures your kick level, low-end energy and loudness against released tracks in the genre and tells you within two minutes whether the tail really holds 40 to 60 Hz or whether your monitors flattered you.