Hardwell seamlessly fuses current and classic eras on fourth album single, ‘BLACK MAGIC’

by: Ross Goldenberg Apr 29, 2022

It’d be criminally understating Hardwell‘s comeback to say that it’s been going more than well so far. Since the very second he entered Bayfront Park and subsequently broadcasted the existence of Rebels Never Die, he’s kept a white-knuckle grip on dance music. And Hardwell is now formally solidifying the pathway to his sophomore effort’s complete arrival, confirming its bimonthly single rollout pattern—although there’s no end date just yet—after delivering “Broken Mirror” and “Into The Unknown“ just two weeks apart from “F*CKING SOCIETY.” After Hardwell pulled back the curtain on all of the Rebels Never Die track names earlier this April, “BLACK MAGIC” was confirmed to be the name of an ID that our eyes were immediately drawn to and it’s now taking its seat as the LP’s fourth single in as many weeks.

Out of all 14 of Hardwell’s Ultra IDs—not including his 2022 rework of “Spaceman”—”Black Magic” was the one that seemed to most closely revisit the sonic identity that he held more than a decade ago. Coming as an indirect sequel to “Blue Magic” from 2009, “BLACK MAGIC” funnels elements from Hardwell releases both new and old—like “Encoded” and “Retrograde“—while brightly carrying the Rebels Never Die torch forward for another seamless leap into the bigroom-techno rebranding he brought forth in downtown Miami. There’s now ten IDs still on the board that Hardwell could potentially choose from for his album’s fifth single slot on May 13 but we’ll likely have to hold on another week to find out the exact answer from the Revealed Recordings king.