Not enough substance to the stuff out there nowadays, but to put a whole blanket statement and say that the entire genre is boring now would be overdoing it. The fact is that there is some decent techno out there, just have to siff through more garbage in order to get there.

What I do find distinguishable between the stuff nowadays is that techno sounds more "progressive". I mean progressive as in more dance friendly formulaic production techniques (high pass filter sweeps, drum roll snares, etc). These things rarely happened in 2000-2004. It's not as loopy and pumping as it used to be.

It almost sounds like all the major players in the techno industry had a secret board meeting and all unanimously agreed to shift the techno 20 BPM lower, use less elements in a track, but drench every track in reverb.

Not to sound fussy or anything, but if I hear ONE MORE techno track that consists only of a drum kick with a reverberated bleep or blop, and the build up consists of him opening up a cut off filter for 32 bars and calling it a day, i'm gonna strangle myself.