Deathcore MIDI Pack

What is your approach to Deathcore drumming?

"Deathcore is really about trying to nail the heaviness of Death Metal and Hardcore at the same time. I approach it almost like a slightly looser version of Death Metal. You still need the speed, precision, and aggression, but it can't feel too clinical.

The cymbals are a big part of that for me. They need a little more weight behind them and often carry the groove more than they would in traditional Death Metal. When the riff drops into something huge, the drums have to make that riff feel even bigger rather than just keeping time underneath it.

Dynamics are pretty simple: hard and harder, haha. There's obviously more nuance to it than that, but Deathcore isn't exactly the place where I'm trying to play delicately. The challenge with the MIDI was keeping everything tight enough to work with modern Deathcore while still having that physical, slightly loose feeling of someone actually beating the hell out of a drum kit."

Which drummers inspired you?

"My holy trinity is Matt Kuykendall from All Shall Perish, Alex Lopez from Suicide Silence, and Art Cruz from his Winds of Plague era.

What I love about those three is that they each helped pioneer a different side of Deathcore drumming. Matt had that combination of savant technique and groove that made All Shall Perish move differently. Alex had this incredibly physical approach where the drums could make an already ridiculous breakdown feel twice as heavy. And Art brought his own combination of speed, precision, and huge grooves to Winds of Plague.

You can hear the blueprint those guys created all over the younger generation of Deathcore drummers now. They weren't following an established formula yet—they were helping figure out what Deathcore drumming was supposed to sound like. That's the era and feeling I wanted to pull from with this pack."

How did the idea for a MIDI Groove Pack come around?

"Most Deathcore MIDI Packs seem to focus on the newest wave of the genre. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's tough to argue that the first wave of Deathcore didn't lay the foundation for pretty much everything that came after it.

That was my main focus here. The mid-to-late 2000s era where Death Metal and Hardcore were being smashed together and nobody seemed particularly concerned about whether every part fit neatly into one genre or the other. You had fast Death Metal sections, huge Hardcore-influenced grooves, breakdowns, Blast Beats, and plenty of ridiculous transitions between all of them.

I wanted a pack built around that original Deathcore vocabulary. I looked around for one and it simply didn't exist, so I had to make one, haha.

There's obviously plenty here that works for modern Deathcore too, but the foundation of the pack comes from that first generation and the drumming that established what Deathcore would eventually become."

Who should use MIDI Groove Packs?

"This pack is built for songwriters who want Deathcore drums that actually move with the riff. If you're jumping between fast Death Metal parts, big Hardcore grooves, breakdowns, and Blast Beats, you need drums that can make those transitions feel natural instead of sounding like four different MIDI patterns glued together.

Whether you're writing an old-school Deathcore demo, working on something more modern, or just need drums underneath a riff before you forget it, the idea is the same: drag something in and keep writing. You don't need to be a drummer, and you don't need to stop every five minutes to program a fill or figure out what the cymbals should be doing.

The grooves are played by a real drummer, so there's weight and movement built into them. The cymbals carry the groove when they need to, the fast sections stay aggressive without becoming sterile, and when it's time for a breakdown, the drums actually make it feel heavier.

If your idea of Deathcore starts somewhere around that original collision of Death Metal and Hardcore, this pack was made with exactly that in mind."