A wear resistant multilayer nitride hard coating for substrates. The hard coating includes a first layer of titanium aluminum nitride and a second layer comprising a plurality of sublayer groups. Each sublayer group includes a first sublayer of titanium silicon nitride and a second sublayer of titanium aluminum nitride. The composition of the titanium aluminum nitride, both in the first layer and in the sublayer groups, is (TixAl1-x)N, wherein 0.4≦x≦0.6. The composition of the titanium silicon nitride sublayers is (TiySi1-y)N, wherein 0.85≦y≦0.98, and all of the silicon is in solid solution in the titanium silicon nitride such that no silicon phase or silicon nitride phase exists in this sublayer. The combined amount of aluminum and silicon present in the sublayer groups being narrowly controlled such that the sum of x and y is in the range of 1.38 to 1.46.