Making double kick drums sound natural

[symmetricalsounds]

Real metal doesn't need bass!

tell that to faith no more, their bassist is sick.

[deadly_habit]

Real metal doesn't need bass!

tell that to faith no more, their bassist is sick.

mmm faith no more and musical genius of mike patton no matter what he is involved in
hell some of meshuggah's lps with synthesized and programmed drums = pure auditory sex, i love when a metal/hardcore group goes nuts on the bass elements, often gets overlooked
peep some of the many collabs bill laswell has done if you're a bass fiend

[sackley]

Real metal doesn't need bass!

tell that to faith no more, their bassist is sick.

Meant it tongue-in-cheek.

Cliche, but between the buried and me have a ridiculously groovy bassist.

[Wrigzilla]

I SMELL THAT WHORE!!!

Man, it's been time since I've listened to dillinger.

As far as getting 'natural' metal style kick drum rolls goes, you need to vary the volume, add subtle timing variations (IE notes off the grid) and think about accents: listen to a load of metal recordings and work out which beats are being accented and which ones aren't. Also 'air' is important, you need that continuity between hits to gell everything together.

My last tip is if you have a mate (or mate of a mate of a mate) who drums, try recording them. On the kick drum use 2 mics, one in front/inside the kick drums (position to preference) and one next to where the beater hits the skin (for that authentic metal clicky kick drum sound celotape a credit card to the point where the beater hits the skin).

[abZ]

most metal productions go for the exact opposite of "natural" when it comes to kicks. triggering and quantizing.

Seems like the best answer to me. I don't listen to much metal anymore, I just have in mind the late 80's and early 90's metal I used to listen to and most of it is about as basic as it gets and the kicks don't even sound like bass drums to me. Quick attack and short decay. Eq the click so it's up front. Usually isn't alot of dynamics and when they used two kick drums they would tune them the same so if anything make the variations very, very subtle. That's all I got.

[Ldizzy]

old hip hop trick : cutoff on the first one (the offbeat one)...

old samplers used to allow u to set Full cutoff only on full velocity played sounds.. its better then just lowering the velocity if u ask me... way more fluid...