There is a drum I've been hearing lately on orchestraic pieces that resembles a loud metallic bang or gunshot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYT9F8yV3-E
This is Nightwish - Song of Myself. The segment starts at about 5:43 but the actual instrument is heard at 5:47. I've done extensive hours of research looking for this instrument on youtube, google, wikipedia, even the website for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I hate to say it but i cant find shit (even tried yahoo answers). any help would be appreciated. (they use the same thing on several other songs off of Imaginaerum, and also on the song Whoever Brings the Night as the last accents that end the song. also been hearing it on God of War soundtrack).

If I had to venture to guess, that's probably a triggered digital sample of some kind of metal percussion sound effect... and by "percussion", I mean something percussive, not something made with musical instruments. It's more like a bolt slamming.

There are no traditional percussion instruments I know of that produce this sound, and I sort of doubt a recording like this would make use of an actual object for a sound like that as opposed to a digital sample library.

It actually almost sounds like it could even be a heavily processed metronome "ding", really.
Layer a heavy kick, crank the bass way too loud, add scads of reverb = Instant prepared bell clank/metal percussion noise.

It always sounded to me like someone swinging a heavy steel sledgehammer on an anvil.

Oh, duh!

I knew I was not describing the sound right. yeah, that is a far more apt description.

The big boomy percussion sounds like a gran cassa to me. There's also a cymbal/ride being hit at the same time, which gives it this huge steely hammer-and-anvil impact kind of texture. And of course, it's all EQ'd like fuck and drowned out by reverb and guitars.

When I was in college doing modern/avant-garde percussion ensemble pieces, we would normally achieve this sound by playing a "brake drum", which is literally what it sounds like-an automobile part. We would strike it with a small metal mallet.

This would be used either as a substitute for an anvil, or was specifically called for in the score.

EDIT For Clarity: That's not to say that this is exactly what Nightwish used in this instance. In Nightwish's case, this is probably where the inspiration for this sound effect came from, as I understand they are heavily orchestrally influenced (not a fan, not familiar with a their work overall, and I only listened to this song to contribute to the thread), and this is how this effect is created in traditional orchestra/percussion ensemble scenarios (aside from orchestras having a big enough budget to bring out an actual anvil, which does happen). Nightwish probably sampled one anvil/brake drum hit (or found one online), and copied & pasted it for the studio recording, and the keyboardist triggers the sample live.

I also think it's not a drum, or it's a melange of sounds, or potentially it's digital. I know Native Instruments recently released a sample pack called "Damage", or something along those lines, which is all recorded sounds of destruction, such as a car falling on top of another car. Hammer on anvil sounds about right too.

Here's an effect I just did by layering a taiko, a snare and a crash/ride. It's not 100% but it sounds pretty close to me. Thrown in a metal mix with a little bit of EQ, you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference.

actually i stumbled across this idea yesterday. could it be possible for that particular sound to be a bass drum rimshot? kinda like the snare drum rimshot? just speculation i guess, i could never find a video with a bass drum rimshot on my phone browser, but i get overwhelmed with snareshots...

This studio video from Nightwish shows some of the percussion they used on the album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcxjKlUcjXo

Sounds like it's the oil drums layered with some bass drums to me.

I'm quite frankly astounded by the fact that they used actual objects.
I say that because it seems like it was utterly a waste and pointless with how the album's production makes it sound like an overproduced, unnatural and squashed-to-fuck protools nightmare, and therefore not something that could really benefit any from using real objects instead of triggering samples.

I mean, the nuances gained from micing an playing percussion live in a studio is totally lost in this kind of blown-out, obnoxiously harsh and sterile production is what I'm trying to say.

I don't even like Nightwish, but it's not intended as an insult to the music, just modern production techniques in general.

IDK if I think/agree the oil drum was actually what was making that sound either way, but I could be wrong. they probably completely altered the way it sounds with 5,000,000 effects, so it could be anything.

damn, thank you awblaster. it was just an oil barrel, fuck me.....