QFT.

Funnily enough, Abbath's drumming is way more exciting than Horgh's. Hell, the current bass player in Immortal is also a much exciting drummer than Horgh.

I'm gonna throw one out that I don't think has been mentioned: the dude who drummed on Ihsahn's solo albums. Incredible stuff. I love his drum tone.

Only Finnish people are of this mind.

who is joey jordison again?

Best drummers. Going to try to stay away from some of the really obvious picks:

-Paul Bostaph. His talents were really wasted playing in nu-Slayer. The first two Forbidden albums shows what he's really made of--the way he seamlessly transitions between different beats and fills is remarkable.
-Dan Zimmermann: "Dethrone Tyranny". 300 beats per minute. Double bass. No triggers.
-Steve Zimmerman: Early Fates Warning would have been a much lesser band without Steve Zimmerman's groove and feel, and the way he can keep the music flowing in pretty much any time signature.
-Clive Burr: Another example of a drummer with a great sense of groove and flow. Nicko McBrain is technically superior, but Clive was the more entertaining to listen to. It's too bad multiple sclerosis robbed him of his gift.
-Nick Menza: A good candidate for the best fills in all of thrash metal.
-Sid Falck. I once heard that he was not actually a fan of metal, but joined Overkill for the challenge of playing thrash. Well, whether he was a fan of it or not, he was really fucking good at it. His "thrash polka" beats are the most propulsive I've ever heard and his bass drum hits like a train. Just listen to the stomp break in "Horrorscope". You'll understand, at least until you bang your head too far and splatter your brains against the floor.

Worst drummers:

-Frost. What's the difference between Frost and a drum machine? Frost takes a cut of the royalties.
-Nick Barker. How to sound like Nick Barker: Step one, start with ordinary rock backbeats and fills. Step two: Subdivide them with additional drum hits on the half beat. Step three: Continue adding divisions until it sounds like you're throwing an oil drum full of tin cans down the world's longest flight of stairs. You can hear him struggling to keep time too.
-Alan Moore. The Dave Holland before Dave Holland, Alan Moore's drumwork sucked a good 15% of the heaviness out of Sad Wings of Destiny by being one of the most spiritless, plain, flaccid performances ever put to tape.

Dishonorable mention goes to the legions of modern power and extreme metal drummers who think BPMs and silly gimmicks like gravity rolls are everything, no matter how triggered, processed, sterile, and dull their performances are. Who needs actual musicality and talent when you can have RoboCock to accompany your totally pointless shred solo copied from a Michael Angelo Batio instruction tape?

Jontho of Ragnarok has a unique and instantly recognizable way to play drums since 2000 or so (Diabolical Age onward), he also played with Kharon and Tsjuder.

I can usually find something good to say about most drummers, but quite frankly I've gotten pretty sick of guys who have no creativity in their playing aside from just blasting and playing quickly the entire time.

That awkward moment when you finally realize that the weakest drummer in Judas Priest and the greatest comic book writer of all time share the same name...

To the guy who mentionned Nick Barker, what? I think he sounds ferocious in Lock Up.

If only he were named Frank Miller, then I could have made a WHORESWHORESWHORES joke.

Asgeir Mickelson from Spiral Architect, Sarke and Borknagar, session for Vintersorg, live for Testament and so on. The SA album is a mindfucker. He even played for Spastik Inc! sadly, the guy is not playing drums much and left Ihsahn.

LOL at the guy calling Barker 'the worst'. You may dislike his drum tone for Dimmu albums, but technically speaking he's excellent. Just check his work with other bands.

Here he plays some Death songs live, and I think he nails every single beat effortlessly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfLfKawo ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ifdNnf ... ure=relmfu

I'll throw Themis Tolis onto the worst pile.

Also want to share in the love of Jamie St Merat. The guy is amazing.


I seem to remember reading an interview with King some time after this audition, and King slammed him for being a pussy or something along those lines. Said he's never seen anybody hit a drum so lightly.

Some of the best would have to be Inferno, Dave Lombardo, and Mario Duplantier

Did he insert blastbeats into "Hell Awaits"? Really?



Tad Leger's drumming would be better if the albums he appeared in didn't have the worst drum production in the world. HEART HEART HEART HEART HEART ATTACK! Doompdoompdoompdoompdoompdoompdoompdoompdoompdoompdoompdoomp! On World Circus it's so bad that you need several listens to even understand what's going on because the fucking booming snare drum threatens to drown out the entire band.

I still love Toxik though.


Plastic drums will take control and bring you to your death
No chance of a normal tone to sound just like the rest
Plastic drums will spread with time your music soon to change
Rhythms become hideous a sound too much to take

The performance of Tomas Corn Lykathea Aflame's Elvenefris is just sick as fuck

Are you kidding? Come on, that is easy.

Okay I count half since I use the Cubase metronome when recording, so that would be 150 for me.
Still, a piece of cake... For me it starts to get hard at 170-180. I'm not that fast really.
But 150/300?

At 4:08 I play probably at 210 (or 420 if you will) without triggers... For a short time of course, but then again I was shitfaced drunk as well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m9D8V0P ... ure=relmfu

I think Dino Sommese deserves a mention as a great drummer. The stuff he did with Dystopia was great, there were some odd beats with pretty good fills in there, all while singing and keeping the timing right. And lets not forget the stuff he did with Asunder and Ghoul.

Bad drummer: Bill Andrews on early DEATH albums. Sounds like a fucking metronome, never misses a beat, but really bores the listener with his lack of variety. At least, Scream Bloody Gore's drums were wild and obsessing. Bill Andrews is just clinical and robotic - but that fits the ambiance.

Good drummer: Dave Lombardo of course. Why do all these death metal drummers who mimic him have to be so generic and boring?
Also Fenriz from DARKTHRONE, unlike Hellhammer he never derived into mallcore.

Why do some of you say Abbath was a bad drummer? I love the drumming on Pure Holocaust and Battles in the North.
And Capricornus was irregular and sloppy for sure, but one of the most inventive drummers in extreme metal's history.

You wouldn't have a better quality recording of that song, would you? Because that's such a noisy recording it's hard to make out what you're playing.

And if it's so easy, why is Dan Zimmermann one of the only drummers who does it? Just compare his double bass to that of not just most power metal drummers but these days most drummers who play fast in general, you can tell that most of the others use triggers.

Also I imagine endurance would count for a lot when playing that sort of thing. It's one thing to do it, it's another to do it for minutes at a time. Not to mention the way he just beats the shit out of his kit in the beginning of "Beyond the Black Hole": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Fxq8p_yyk

Just saying, triggers have nothing to do with making the drummer faster or something. They just make understandable what the drummer is actually playing, especially with faster tempos where you just hear a mess of low frequencies from the bass drum - for example. In fact, if you suck at double bass, the triggers will make your mistakes far more evident.

Some people throw shit at people like Hellhammer, Frost or Nick Barker -even Inferno - just cause in studio their kits sound plastic or 'triggered', but still they are playing what you hear and all of them are impressive in endurance, precision and technique; sometimes it's not even the drummer fault! the producers and main members of the band are the ones who decide how finally everything will sound.

I've been all of them live and they've been incredible so far. I guess people who actually have seen Mayhem or Arcturus live can say that he sounds way better in live environments. Barker? at least with with Lock Up his performance is so intense that you will understand it just being there ,when he beats the shit out of you thru the speakers. I saw Dimmu in 03' with him and he was a fucking monster.

The few I can think of atm (that has already not been said). They might not be the "best" but They have a huge impact in the songs that they play on.

Steve Shelton from Confessor. just listen to Condemned
Dave Johnson Form Avalanche (US/MN) just listen to Angst

The song you mentioned a tfirst wasn't very fast...
Somewhere Out In Space is MUCH faster. There's some serious double bass there. I can keep up with that for while, even tho it's really hard

I didn't listen to that last song you linked to but I guess it's fast

We have a demo recording of the song but regurlary I don't play like that... I was just drunk and in that condition I always speed up too much hehe.

But I doubt anybody could play 16th notes at 300 bpm!

I really like Gar Samuelson in Megadeth´s "Killing is My Busiess...". You can notice how hi mixed his jazz influences in his drum patterns ending in a very fluent, yet comlplex style. His fillls were cool and made "KIMB" an excelent album.

"Beyond the Black Hole" is the first track off of Somewhere Out in Space.

All the really fast Gamma Ray songs I tested with a metronome seemed to top out at 300 bpm, although they spend different amounts of time at that speed.

I just like Dan Zimmermann's drumming in general, and his ability to play very quickly and precisely without relying on electronic crutches to make his fast double bass runs sound better or inflate his BPMs (easier to play fast when you don't have to use any kind of force) like so many others. You can really hear the difference with triggered/Pro Tooled drums vs. a natural performance in terms of energy and feel too, and that's probably more important--a metal drummer's FIRST priority is to provide a propulsive rhythm to drive the song, and electronically cleaned up performances work directly against that.

Damn Sean Reinert is a beast. I can't believe I didn't know anything about him until now.

You're right, but it's such a waste to record a good drummer and to eventually ruin his drum tone in the production process... What's the point of being a technical expert if you sound like a shitty drum machine?






By the way, has anyone mentioned Faust on early EMPEROR releases? He was really amazing with speed and creativity, especially during fills.

In terms of Bill Andrews on Leprosy and Spiritual Healing, I think he did a perfect job on Leprosy. It was simplistic drumming, but it fit the music splendidly. That simplicity did not fit on Spiritual Healing, however. The album may be my favorite Death album overall, but it really needed a drummer like Sean Reinert or Gene Hoglan.

Sometimes, you just have no choice if the main members like that sound, cause there are people who like that plastic drum tone. Even if I usually like more natural production works, I don't hate the drumming on Dimmu's PEM, I think it's excellent. The Maelstrom Mephisto and Blessings are incredible in that department.

In the realm of bassist, it's way harder to get a nice tone and a good balance in the mix, when usually you have 2 guitarists that want to sound more than anyone else; even top tier bassist like Steve Di Giorgio has seen his bass drowned in a wall of guitars and drums.

I wonder if the way Steve DiGiorgio was buried on Horror Show was the reason why he snubbed Iced Earth before the tour for that album, resulting in a bunch of drama?

I don't hear any great difference between Leprosy and Spiritual Healing, apart from the effects on the vocals. Spiritual Healing has a little more melodies. Both albums sound like they come from the same studio session.




I've never liked unnatural drum tones. Even equalization tends to deform the tone to my ears.




Yes, bass guitar is probably the most difficult instrument to mix. The challenge is to make it loud enough to be heard (noticed?), but without covering the guitar low end or bass drum.
But I don't see the point in including bass tracks if they cannot be percieved by human ears. For example, on Thousand Swords, the only bass I can hear is the break on "To Die in Fight"'.

Woolie Wool decided to troll this thread.

he decided to have some fun with it, but he's basically right in everything that he's said about drums and drummers here.

And yes, triggers make it easier to play faster for longer because an absolute minimum of force is required. Disconnect a drummer's triggers halfway through a set and even with all the pieces perfectly miked, you'll suddenly wonder where all that bass drum went, especially.

I consider both of Opeth's drummers (Old and New) excellent drummers.

Martin Lopez and Martin Axenrot.

Maybe you're refering to the drum pedals. Those are the ones who make the footwork easier (like Axis, Iron Cobra or DW's for example). Triggers are just a sound device, not a performance one.

And if you disconnect the triggers, of course you won't hear a damn thing, since instead using ambient microphones, the triggers goes to the soundboard directly acting like mics. It's not so different than disconnecting the cable from a guitar or shutting down the amplifier.

He's talking about setting the sensitivity really high on the trigger so someone could get the sound of a full kick by barely tapping it. When he was talking about disconnecting the trigger he said that the pieces were perfectly miked. So you would hear the bass drums but you might notice a decrease in BPM because they can't pussyfoot it anymore. (If that's what the drummer is used to)

I think that when you set the trigger so you can pussyfoot the double bass, then it's cheating. But otherwise I see no problem if I like the production. For example Doc on Vader's Litany had such a powerfull sound that was probably made possible by a trigger.

Leon Macey of Mithras. That guy is an absolute monster behind the kit. Not to mention he's an accomplished guitarist as well.

Also, Impiety have had various excellent though lesser known drummers throughout their history.

Pussyfoot? That's an awesome expression!

The only guy that's good at this is Wrest. You can always clearly hear his bass lines even when his guitar tone is thick.

You mean a decrease in volume?
BPM refers to tempo speed, not to volume intensity.