I wonder if you can even recognise the new when you're old
Thing is: novelty is ontologically nonsense. Its necessary condition being that what it claims as new, is different from all what is and hence that it is, what is not. Problem is that if that would be really the case, no novelty could ever be understood or recognised. The new can never be new, or it wouldn't be comprehensible. It should always carry the old along, as it were, to mark its difference. Style is a very clear indication of that, as usually styles only make sense when played out against a precedessor or a historical context and not as an absolute value.
In that sense, longing for a next incarnation of the hardcore continuum and requiring it to be novel, might be quite frustrating and little fruitful. If anything, it's certainly a game of diminishing returns. At least for me. I think, one should look for counter-continuums, different modes of production and distribution, competing value systems, etc.