Terrorcore, terror (or in Dutch and French: "terreur") is a music genre. It originated in Frankfurt in 1994 with the birth of the record label Kotzaak (a PCP sublabel). For a short time, terrorcore artists began to appear in Europe, with Netherlands and Germany having the largest terror scenes. Terrorcore is a faster variant of hardcore techno. It is noticeably different to some other hardcore genres like breakcore, which uses samples of breakbeat, and speedcore, which primarily concentrates on faster Tempo. Terrorcore is a difficult music style to describe because everyone has different interpretations of the music. Most commonly, terrorcore is described as many sounds synthesized to create a 'terror effect' on the music, with regular, and slightly louder sounds. In some genres of dance music, DJs put in sharp terror sounds.

The most common properties of terrorcore are:

* Tempo of 180 to 600 beats per minute
* Pitch of varied low sounds
* Tracks with heavy metal sounds that a DJ may sample from records of metal bands
* Samples from horror movies
* Less melodic than other gabber