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Sample Logic – Drum Fury (Review)

Sample Logic just released DRUM FURY, a cinematic drum and percussion library that focuses on epic and – in the company’s own words – apocalyptic drum sounds. Drum Fury features a broad collection of powerful percussion instruments recorded in various locations, ranging from churches and auditoriums to the famed Skywalker Scoring Stage. With 11GB worth of samples and over 110 available instrument patches, Drum Fury delivers just about everything you need to create earth-shattering cinematic percussion lines.

Sample Logic kindly provided us with a review copy of the library so we can check out what Drum Fury brings to the table. In the following review, we’ll find out together, if Sample Logic’s new product is strong enough to smash and pound for its place in the densely populated cinematic percussion territory.

OVERVIEW

Drum Fury is a sample library designed for Native Instruments’ full version of KONTAKT 5.8.1 or higher. The library features 11GB of content (over 35,149 samples) and comes with 113 multi-sampled instrument patches. The instruments captured include various orchestral drums, toms and taiko ensembles, cymbals, ethnic percussion instruments and even a selection of marching drums. This is the full list of instruments included:

  • Cinematic Impact Collections
  • Concert Bass Drum (Multiple Sticks)
  • Cymbals (Multiple Sizes, Strikes, Swipes & Scrapes)
  • Gong (Hits, Rolls & Rubs)
  • Marching Drums (Multiple Sticks, Solo & Ensembles)
  • Bass
  • Cymbals
  • Snares
  • Tenors
  • Taiko (Multiple Sticks, Solo & Ensembles)
  • Toms (Multiple Sticks, Solo & Ensembles) ⁃ Timpani (Multiple Sticks)
  • World Percussion
  • Conguita
  • Darbuka
  • Djembe
  • Doumbek
  • Dununba
  • Kpanlogo
  • Sakra
  • Udu

DRUM FURY INTERFACE

Drum Fury comes with a sleek and streamlined GUI that features just the most important controls. Right in the center, you’ll find three large drums that allow you to preview the sound of your patch by clicking on them. To the left and right, you can see two sound-shaping sliders for sonic enhancement. While looking pretty straight-foward, under the interface’s hood the sliders control an elaborate chain of internal proccessors. Energizer adds compression, distortion and saturation to the signal to make it more grainy and aggressive. On the opposite side, Polisher introduces some mastering touches including top-and-bottm equalization, tape simulation, envelope shaping and stereo widening. When used in moderation, both sliders can add a certain type of edge and over-the-top feel to your drums. A sound usually connected to most of today’s trailer and action music.

Drum Fury’s GUI also features some other standard controls like tuning, envelope shaping and basic filtering. From the main page, you can also engage and control the onboard EQ and compressor, as well as the sends for reverb and delay.

THE SOUND OF FURY

Drum Fury offers a wide range of orchestral, cinematic and world percussion. The collection of instruments ranges from conventional drums like taikos, concert toms, bass drums and cymbals to more exotic ones like a Doumbek, Sakara or an African Kpanlogo. The library also features a collection of great sounding Marching Drum instruments in the style of American stadium marching bands.

Across the bank, the instruments sound very clean and polished, sitting ready to drop into your next cinematic music piece. There’s a wide spectrum of various taiko, bass drum and concert tom configurations, differing not only in sound, playing style and ensemble size but also in microphone positions. Some instruments are available with dry, stage, hall and balcony room settings which hints at the array of microphones that were used during the recording.

Also concerning mostly the taikos and toms, you get a neat assortment of processed versions of the instruments. These sound-designed versions of the natural recordings are perfect for when you want to add a modern/hybrid type of feel to your cue. Among the patches I particularly liked are the massive “Battle to the End“, “Breaking The Ice” and punchy “Spanking” patch.

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Most of the instruments included with Drum Fury contain a very high amount of round robins and dynamic levels. This comes in particularly handy if you’re programming fast or dynamic percussion passages. However while some keys provide up to 10 round robins, others have to get along with just one sample which may be due to the different sources the source sounds dervie from. Maybe this will be subject of a future update.

Since Drum Fury is a collection of instruments recorded at different locations, there is no coherent room sound like in most of the Spitfire Audio sample libraries for example. While the concert toms, bass drums and most of the taikos sound quite roomy, the ethnic percussion instruments are recorded rather dry. Apart from the consistency standpoint, I don’t see this as much of a problem since for the most part, the rooms that were chosen fit the instruments very well.

CONCLUSION

Drum Fury is a big, bold and angry sounding cinematic percussion library that provides users with a broad collection of well-crafted sounds. Whether you are looking for organic drum sounds or thunderous trailer percussion, Drum Fury has got you covered. In combination with its sleek, streamlined GUI, Drum Fury is a fun-to-use sample library that offers many creative and tonal options to the modern media composer.

Drum Fury is available at a price of $199 through Sample Logic’s online store.

DRUM FURY OVERVIEW

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