Toontrack Death Metal EZX: Getting Realistic, Brutal Drums

Programmed death metal drums get a bad rap. We’ve all heard it: the fake, plastic-sounding kits, the robotic, soul-crushing blast beats that sound more like a typewriter than a real drummer. It’s that “machine gun” effect that instantly screams “demo.”

But here's the thing: many of the most massive, professional-sounding metal albums you love are packed with samples and editing. So, if both killer-sounding and terrible-sounding drums use samples, the samples themselves aren't the problem. The problem is how they’re used.

The Toontrack Death Metal EZX, engineered by the legendary Mark Lewis (Cannibal Corpse, The Black Dahl Murder, Whitechapel), is an insanely powerful tool for exactly this. But just loading it up and programming on the grid won't get you there. Let’s dive into how to use this beast of a library to create drums that sound monstrously heavy and convincingly human.

What is the Toontrack Death Metal EZX?

First, a quick rundown. The Death Metal EZX is an expansion for Toontrack's EZdrummer 2 and Superior Drummer 3. It was recorded by Mark Lewis at his go-to spot, Mana Recording Studios in Florida.

You get two full kits:

• A custom Ayotte kit, renowned for its punch and clarity.
• A classic Tama Starclassic Bubinga, a modern metal staple.

It also comes loaded with a deep selection of cymbals from Zildjian, Meinl, and Sabian, plus a ton of mix-ready presets and a library of MIDI grooves to get you started. It’s designed to give you that polished, aggressive, Florida death metal sound right out of the box. But the real magic happens when you start manipulating it.

Making The Death Metal EZX Sound Human

Having killer samples is just step one. The next—and most important—step is to fight the robot. Human drummers are beautifully imperfect, and that’s what gives a performance life. Here’s how to inject that humanity into your MIDI programming.

Velocity Is Your Best Friend

The single biggest giveaway of programmed drums is static velocity. Setting every snare hit in a blast beat to the max velocity (127) is a guaranteed way to make it sound fake. A real drummer can't possibly hit with the exact same force at 240 BPM; the hits will naturally vary in strength.

The Death Metal EZX is deeply multi-sampled, meaning Toontrack recorded countless hits at different velocities. A hit at velocity 110 isn't just a quieter version of a hit at 127—it's an entirely different sample with its own unique tone and character.

Actionable Tip:
When programming blast beats, manually edit your velocities. Don’t just leave them all at 127. Try alternating between, say, 125 for the main hits and 115-120 for the in-between hits. For fills and grooves, randomize velocities slightly around a target value. A few clicks of variation is all it takes for your brain to perceive it as a real performance.

Grid vs. Groove: The 90% Rule

The second robot-killer is perfect timing. No drummer, not even the tightest ones, plays 100% perfectly on the grid. Quantizing all your MIDI notes perfectly is another path to sterile-sounding drums.

Producers and editors in the metal world know this. It’s common to quantize drums not to 100%, but somewhere between 90-98%. This tightens up the performance significantly, making it sound powerful and precise, but it leaves just enough of the original human "push and pull" to feel natural.

Actionable Tip:
After you’ve programmed or performed your drum part, use your DAW’s quantization function, but dial back the "Strength" or "Percentage" setting. Start at 90% and adjust from there. You’ll get the tightness you need for modern metal without completely erasing the feel.

Strategic Sample Reinforcement

Sometimes, the best way to use the Death Metal EZX isn’t to replace drums, but to reinforce them. When a real drummer plays a blast beat, their snare hits are naturally weaker than when they’re laying into a heavy backbeat. This can cause the snare to get lost in a dense mix during the fastest sections.

Instead of cranking the volume on the live snare track (which just brings up a ton of cymbal bleed), you can use a sample from the EZX to add punch precisely where it’s needed.

Actionable Workflow:

1. Start with your live drum tracks.
2. Use a drum trigger plugin like Slate Trigger 2 or your DAW's transient detection to create a MIDI track from the live snare performance.
3. Load a snare from the Death Metal EZX on that MIDI track.
4. Instead of having the sample play throughout the song, blend it in. Automate its volume to be louder during fast blast beats or fills and much quieter (or completely off) during slower grooves. This gives you the best of both worlds: the natural tone of the real snare and the surgical punch of the sample right when you need it.

Processing the Death Metal EZX for a Modern Mix

Once your MIDI performance feels right, it’s time to process the kit. The presets in the EZX are a great starting point, but some extra massaging can really make the drums sit perfectly in your track.

Parallel Compression for a Larger-Than-Life Snare

Want a snare that’s punchy and aggressive but also has body and sustain? Parallel compression is the answer.

Actionable Tip:
Route your main snare track from the EZX (and any reinforcement samples) to an auxiliary bus. On that bus, insert a hyper-aggressive compressor. An 1176-style plugin like the Waves CLA-76 or Slate FG-116 is perfect for this. Set the attack and release to their fastest settings and use a high ratio (20:1 or the "All Buttons In" mode). Slam it until the needle is barely moving, then slowly blend that crushed signal back in underneath your main snare track. This adds immense power and sustain without killing the initial transient. For more tips like this, check out our guide to the basics of compression for mixing metal.

EQing the Kit for Clarity and Punch

Even with great samples, a little EQ goes a long way in carving out space in a busy metal mix.

Actionable Tips:

• Kick: Create space for the bass guitar by cutting some low-mids around 350-500Hz. This removes that "boxy" or "cardboard" sound. Boost the sub-bass around 60-80Hz for weight, and add a boost somewhere between 4-8kHz for the beater "click" that helps it cut through. For an even deeper-dive, check out our guide on how to EQ metal kick drums.
• Snare: Find the fundamental "thwack" of the snare, usually around 200-250Hz, and give it a gentle boost for body. Add some "crack" and presence with a boost in the 5-7kHz range. A high-pass filter set around 80-100Hz will clean up any unnecessary low-end rumble.
• Cymbals: The most important move here is a high-pass filter on your overheads and room mics. Cut everything below 300-500Hz to remove kick and snare bleed and keep your low-end clean and focused.

Properly EQ'd drums are critical for creating space for your guitars. To learn how to make them work together, take a look at our guide to tame boomy metal guitar low end.

Bringing It All Together

The Toontrack Death Metal EZX is a phenomenal toolkit for modern metal production. But remember, it’s just a tool. Its power is unlocked not by the samples themselves, but by how you program and process them. By focusing on humanization through velocity, timing, and strategic reinforcement, you can create drum tracks that are both brutally heavy and believably real.

Of course, reading about these techniques is one thing. Seeing them put into practice by the best producers in the business is a whole different level of learning.

At Nail The Mix, you can watch world-class instructors like Will Putney, Jens Bogren, and even Mark Lewis himself mix real songs from scratch, using these very techniques on drums, guitars, vocals, and more. If you’re ready to see how the pros create release-ready metal mixes, check out our full catalog of Nail The Mix sessions.