I used to listen to hardcore techno, and I was doing the same - always going harder, faster, nastier. Ended up listening to a whole load of speedcore and finally admitting that it just didn't do anything for me any more. 300BPM distorted noise is jst a watse of time...

That's when I started listening to Techno (Clarke, Mills etc). It ws slower, but still had the rough, robotic sound of the harder stuff, but was so much better produced and more interetsing.

You can't just headbang all day, eventually it makes you sick!!!

I dropped out of techno and into minimal (for home listening) but in the last 6 months, or year maybe I have been getting back into techno again, and really enjoying picking up where I left off. There is some quality techno around, and it's great to feel those vibes again!

For me, it was a matter of stopping the "harder/faster" mentality, and looking for better produced stuff, that's what re-ingited my love of the music!