digital hardcore autist reporting in
the thing about ATR and DH in general in my opinion is that it was too ahead of the curve like a lot of media in the 90s (because we haven't progressed as a culture since then and the future has been canceled (mark_fisher.jpg)). like, you see the exact same thing with how Serial Experiments Lain experienced a huge revival in popularity in the 2010s: it's because the elements were already there of networking technologies leading to a fundamental shift in society that we are still getting a grip on (because everything is accelerating too fast) were already there, and unlike a lot of 90s cyberhype techno-optimist Californian Ideology bullshit, things like Lain and digital hardcore attempted to confront these changes on their own terms.
in the case of DH specifically, there was already a lot of precedent in electronic music for using technology towards subversive ends as comradely objects where the user is engaged in a process of understanding the tech and using it in unintended ways. that's like the entire genesis of jungle music for instance, and that scene was also driven a lot by pirate radio stations where the users weren't just creating new sounds through cut-up sampling but also distributing them without the music industry's involvement.
ATR (back in the day before Alec became a right-wing dipshit) and DH in general pretty much just took all of these pieces and added to it a punk ethos/aesthetic/energy. it gave a (however superficial as punk tends to be) radical aesthetic to all these elements and in my opinion basically exposed what was already there in the electronic music scene: engaging with technology in a DIY kind of way, as a comradely object rather than a consumer commodity, has political significance and is also necessary because these same technologies will be used by fascists to control people. but it was probably both too political, not intellectual enough, and too much at the tail end of the 90s electronic music scene to establish itself as a bigger scene, and you really need to look to find any DH stuff from back then other than like, ATR, The Shizit, Cobra Killer, Christoph de Babalon, EC8OR, Bomb20, etc. like there was actually a lot of DH in the 2000s but it was all through MySpace netlabels so a lot of that has been lost to time. you can still find stuff on the Internet Archive though.
DH as a scene may have died off but it also started to come back in the 2010s with artists like Death Grips and Machine Girl, along with a lot of other less well known stuff even if they don't acknowledge DH as being their direct influences. combining electronic music with the intensity of punk music has absolutely come back and in my opinion it's because what was once a cutting edge political statement of the need to engage with technology as users and producers rather than merely consumers came at a time in the 90s when things like the internet were still a pretty new thing that not a lot of people used. these days this sort of thing speaks directly to the lived experiences of most people and I think that's why infusing electronic music with more of a raw emotional energy/intensity makes sense and appeals to people now.
it's almost difficult to even classify anything as being "digital hardcore" these days because that style has seeped into so much stuff. but aside from Machine Girl and Death Grips, a couple other newer bands I really like that fall into a digital hardcore sorta vibe:
https://lotionmultinationalcorporation.bandcamp.com/ (vid related is a fucking banger)
https://deathinsurance.bandcamp.com/https://vrtlhvn.bandcamp.com/https://sweatequitynyc.bandcamp.com/album/i-dont-know-how-to-be-happymore EBM than breakcore but still digital hardcore esque IMO:
https://filmmaker.bandcamp.com/https://bodymusick.bandcamp.com/also D-Trash of course:
https://d-trashrecords.bandcamp.com/