Fantasm is an American DJ and electronic music producer working across industrial techno, hard techno, rave techno, and hard dance. The musician’s real name is Kenzo Meservey. He is originally from Los Angeles, while the development of his professional career is closely associated with Lyon, France.
Fantasm became one of the fastest-rising artists on the new hard-techno scene. His first notable releases appeared in 2023, and only two years later he was performing at major European raves, had entered the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs ranking, and had built an international audience.
His music is based on distorted percussion, high tempos, industrial textures, sharp synthesizer parts, and elements of hardstyle, hardcore, and neo-rave. Fantasm’s tracks are designed primarily for physical impact on the dancefloor: instead of extended melodic development, he uses sudden rhythmic changes, heavy drops, and an extremely dense sound.
Background and the Beginning of the Project
Kenzo Meservey was born in Los Angeles and later moved to Lyon, France. The European hard-techno scene became the main environment in which the Fantasm project developed.
Fantasm began producing music in 2023. His first works appeared during a period of rapid growth for hard techno, a style that brought together industrial heaviness, high speeds, the aesthetic of old-school raves, and elements of more extreme forms of dance music.
GODZILLA and the First Releases
One of Fantasm’s earliest compositions was GODZILLA, released in August 2023. The six-minute track already contained the main elements of his future style: a heavy four-on-the-floor kick, distorted percussion, tense transitions, and a dark industrial atmosphere.
In November of the same year, he released I Watched My Own Funeral. Both the title and the sonic presentation matched the project’s overall aesthetic: aggressive, deliberately dark, and focused on the extreme energy of the rave.
The early period also included Alles Slopen, Burn the Floor, and Place on Fire. These works circulated through independent hard-techno platforms and gradually attracted the attention of European promoters.
Breakthrough with Verknipt
A major stage in Fantasm’s career was his collaboration with the Dutch brand Verknipt, which specializes in large-scale hard-techno events.
On February 24, 2024, the artist made his Verknipt debut during an All Day Long event in Zaandam. For Fantasm, the performance became an opportunity to introduce himself to one of the most active audiences within European hard techno.
His performance style differed noticeably from the restrained club approach of traditional techno. Fantasm interacted actively with the audience, changed the direction of his set abruptly, and combined industrial techno with hardstyle, hardcore, and other more extreme forms of electronic music.
The artist later received his own extended programs. His first all-night-long performance in the Netherlands sold out within ten minutes, demonstrating the speed at which the project’s audience was growing.
Fantasm himself described his Verknipt debut as one of the defining events of his early career. He viewed the performance not as an ordinary set, but as a test of his ability to hold the attention of a large dancefloor and respond to the crowd without following a rigidly fixed program.
Buttercup With An Axe
One of Fantasm’s biggest early releases was Buttercup With An Axe, issued in 2024.
The track is built around the contrast between a recognizable melodic image and hard industrial production. This combination became one of the artist’s characteristic techniques: a familiar or deliberately provocative element is placed inside a heavy rave structure.
Buttercup With An Axe became Fantasm’s most popular composition on streaming platforms. By August 2026, it had accumulated more than 17 million streams on Spotify alone.
The track’s success showed that Fantasm’s audience extended beyond the specialized hard-techno scene. His music began circulating widely through short-form videos, workout playlists, and collections of contemporary hard electronic music.
Releases of 2024
Fantasm’s discography expanded rapidly throughout 2024. Notable releases from the period included:
- You Like This Btch (Choke Mix)*;
- Number One;
- Venom;
- Danny Phantom with Ikkhi;
- RED SPIDER LILY;
- Buttercup With An Axe.
In these compositions, the artist experimented less with melodic genres than with different forms of hard dance music. His tracks featured reverse bass, hardstyle rhythms, industrial hits, fragments of hardcore, and deliberately abrasive vocal samples.
RED SPIDER LILY, released on November 8, 2024, presented a darker and more tense side of the project. DJ Mag later highlighted the track among the works that defined Fantasm’s international rise.
Performance Style
Fantasm’s performances are built around extremely high physical energy. He does not maintain a distance between the DJ booth and the crowd, but constantly addresses the audience, moves with the rhythm, and emphasizes climactic moments through gestures.
His programs combine industrial techno with hardstyle, hardcore, reverse bass, and neo-rave. The tempo and density of the sound may change within a single set, but the music almost always remains hard and designed for the peak hours of a party.
This approach distinguishes Fantasm from artists of the traditional techno school, for whom minimalism and gradual development are essential. His sets are closer to contemporary festival hard techno: fast, highly contrasting, and built around a constant succession of powerful moments.
At the same time, the artist does not always prepare an unchanging tracklist. He selects music according to the response of the crowd, combining his own compositions with tracks by artists from hard techno and related scenes.
Requiem Psycho, NFWU, and the 2025 Period
In March 2025, Fantasm and Hades released the collaborative track REQUIEM PSYCHO. The five-minute composition combined a heavy industrial foundation with an anxious, almost horror-like atmosphere and became one of the period’s most notable releases.
Fantasm recorded NFWU with producer Exproz and HIT IT BOY with Kruelty. These collaborations connected Fantasm with different segments of the hard electronic scene, ranging from industrial techno to raw hardstyle and hardcore.
The tracks SCANDAL ANTHEM and On Fire were also released in 2025. By this point, Fantasm’s music had become noticeably more varied within its chosen direction: alongside longer club tracks, he began releasing shorter and more direct compositions designed for immediate impact.
International Performances
Following his breakthrough with Verknipt, Fantasm began appearing regularly in the lineups of some of Europe’s biggest hard-techno events.
He performed at Sound Waves in Portugal, at Verknipt events in the Netherlands, and at a Teletech party at Amnesia in Ibiza. In September 2025, Fantasm joined the lineup of Teletech’s first Ibiza event alongside Nico Moreno, NOVAH, Odymel, Patrick Mason, and other representatives of the contemporary hard electronic scene.
His touring geography included the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and other countries. Resident Advisor lists Cologne, Malta, northern Italy, Barcelona, and Amsterdam among the regions where he has performed most frequently.
Fantasm’s rise coincided with the broader popularization of hard techno, but his success cannot be explained by the genre trend alone. His vivid stage presence, frequent release schedule, and active interaction with audiences helped the artist establish a recognizable identity within a relatively short period.
DJ Mag Top 100 DJs
In 2025, Fantasm entered the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs ranking for the first time, placing 93rd.
The publication identified him as an artist originally from Los Angeles and based in Lyon, France, and described his main style as industrial techno. Among his key works, DJ Mag highlighted REQUIEM PSYCHO, NFWU, and RED SPIDER LILY.
Top 100 DJs is based on open audience voting and is not a ranking of production quality. Nevertheless, Fantasm’s entry into the Top 100 only two years after the beginning of his active career reflects the rapid growth of his touring profile and international listener community.
The Album KENZO
On February 27, 2026, Fantasm released his debut full-length album KENZO.
The title refers to the musician’s real first name and emphasizes the project’s more personal character. The album consists of twenty compositions with a total running time of approximately 75 minutes and was released through WONDER.
The tracklist included:
- This Is Kenzo;
- Ruler of Worlds;
- Arena Conqueror;
- Hard Is Our Way of Life with Chaos Project;
- Shake That Bunda with The Straikerz;
- BEUKEN with KARAH;
- No Competition;
- MIMI;
- 90 Minuten Lang;
- Nightmare Symphony with The Dark Horror;
- Outsiders with AZDAT;
- Pac-Man with Gaston Zani;
- Heavy Music Is Dead with KAMI;
- Lord of Chaos.
The album is not structured as a traditional narrative with a sequential storyline. Instead, it functions as an overview of Fantasm’s musical world, ranging from industrial techno and hard techno to hardstyle, hardcore, and more direct festival-oriented material.
The large number of collaborations emphasizes the artist’s connection to an expanding hard electronic scene in which the boundaries between techno, hard dance, and hardcore are becoming increasingly flexible.
Shake That Bunda and New Directions
One of the album’s most popular tracks was Shake That Bunda, recorded with The Straikerz. It combines a heavy electronic foundation with a short vocal hook and a more compact structure.
By August 2026, the track had accumulated more than six million streams on Spotify. Other notable later releases included This Is Kenzo, BABY BOY, Sparta with Activator, and Oceans with Chravma.
These releases demonstrate Fantasm’s transition from a series of independent club singles toward the more systematic development of his own catalog. At the same time, the artist has not softened his sound for a broader audience and continues to work within the hard electronic scene.
Musical Style
Fantasm’s main musical directions include:
- industrial techno;
- hard techno;
- rave techno;
- hard dance;
- neo-rave;
- elements of hardstyle and hardcore.
His music is characterized by powerful distorted kicks, metallic percussion, sharp synthesizer parts, and short vocal phrases. Melody is used mainly as a source of tension or as a recognizable contrast, rather than as the foundation of extended emotional development.
Fantasm frequently combines club techno with hardstyle techniques, including reverse bass, abrupt changes in percussion, and massive climaxes. Other works show the influence of hardcore and uptempo, particularly in the density and aggressiveness of the rhythm.
Public Image
Fantasm’s public image is based on a direct connection with the rave audience. Unlike anonymous or detached techno projects, he actively presents himself through social media, publishes footage from performances, and emphasizes his emotional reaction to what is happening in the venue.
His visual style is built around industrial lighting, dark club environments, tattoos, and the physical energy of the performance. However, there is no basis for claiming that the artist creates complex conceptual video installations or connects every release to a pre-designed philosophical system.
The Fantasm alias supports the project’s dark aesthetic, but no publicly confirmed explanation of its origin exists. The theory that it combines the words fantasy and phasm remains an unverified interpretation.
Audience
By August 2026, Fantasm had more than one million monthly listeners on Spotify. His biggest streaming tracks included Buttercup With An Axe, You Like This Btch (Choke Mix)*, Shake That Bunda, and SCANDAL ANTHEM.
His audience developed primarily through European hard-techno events, streaming playlists, and short concert videos. Live performances remain the foundation of his growth: Fantasm belongs to the category of artists for whom the physical energy of a set is no less important than the studio recording.
Selected Discography
Early Releases
- GODZILLA — 2023;
- Alles Slopen — 2023;
- I Watched My Own Funeral — 2023;
- Burn the Floor — 2023;
- Place on Fire — 2023.
Main Singles and EPs
- Danny Phantom — with Ikkhi, 2024;
- Buttercup With An Axe — 2024;
- You Like This Btch (Choke Mix)* — 2024;
- Number One — 2024;
- Venom — 2024;
- RED SPIDER LILY — 2024;
- REQUIEM PSYCHO — with Hades, 2025;
- NFWU — with Exproz;
- HIT IT BOY — with Kruelty, 2025;
- SCANDAL ANTHEM — 2025;
- On Fire — 2025;
- BABY BOY — 2026;
- Sparta — with Activator, 2026;
- Oceans — with Chravma, 2026.
Album
- KENZO — 2026.
Significance
Fantasm represents a generation of artists that changed the perception of festival techno in the mid-2020s. His music combines industrial techno with hardstyle, hardcore, and rave culture, while his performances become an intense exchange of energy between the artist and the crowd.
His career developed unusually quickly: the first releases appeared in 2023, his Verknipt debut took place in 2024, and by 2025 Fantasm had entered the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs. The release of the album KENZO in 2026 confirmed his transition from a rapidly rising live project into an artist with a full original discography.
Fantasm is one of the notable representatives of the new wave of industrial hard techno. His identity is built on heavy production, the extreme dynamics of his sets, and the ability to combine several styles of hard electronic music without attempting to conform to traditional genre boundaries.
