Extinction Level Event (ELE) is a cutting-edge drum library meticulously engineered for rock and metal producers who demand both bone crushing intensity and lifelike realism. At its core is the Full Bleed feature, which replicates authentic studio mic spill—so when you strike the snare, its sound naturally leaks into kick, overhead, and tom channels, just like in a real recording session. Coupled with extensive velocity layers and round-robin samples, ELE captures the raw, human feel of an actual drummer, eliminating the stiff, machine-gun effect so common in programmed drums.
One aspect that sets ELE apart is how quickly you can achieve professional results. Straight out of the box, the library includes mix-ready presets that deliver everything from gritty old-school heaviness to polished, modern punch, letting you plug in and start tracking without hours of tedious fine-tuning. If you crave deeper control, ELE’s onboard mixer and effects section empower you to sculpt each mic channel—tweaking EQ, compression, and even saturation—until you dial in that perfect drum tone for your specific project. This flexibility means it can handle anything from thrash and death metal to hard rock and even alternative genres, all while maintaining that cohesive “live band” vibe.
Above all, ELE makes life easier for producers and musicians at every skill level. Beginners can skip the learning curve of building realistic drums from scratch, and experienced engineers save countless hours normally spent imitating real-room dynamics with artificial reverbs and routing tricks. The library’s high-impact samples give your songs immediate credibility and bite, and its advanced scripting ensures each performance feels alive. By prioritizing authenticity, speed, and sonic firepower, Extinction Level Event stands out as the ultimate solution for anyone who wants uncompromising, human-sounding drums ready to slam into any rock or metal mix.
Imagine you’re in a real studio live room, recording a drum kit. When the snare is hit, the snare mic obviously picks up the main impact—but so do the microphones for the kick, the toms, even the overheads. That subtle “cross talk” is what makes a live drum recording feel organic, as each hit resonates throughout the entire kit.
Extinction Level Event replicates that exact phenomenon digitally through a feature we call “Full Bleed”. Whenever you trigger a snare hit, for example, you’ll also catch a faint trace of that snare within the kick mic channel, the overheads, or any other mic involved. As a result, each drum part interacts with the entire kit, creating a sense of depth and authenticity that purely isolated samples can’t match.
For instance, if you’re programming a fast section of hi-hat work alongside intermittent snare shots, you’ll hear the hat bleeding into the snare mic, shaping the overall tone and making the performance sound far less “robotic.” And if you decide you want a tighter, more modern sound, you can simply dial back or disable the bleed. That flexibility means you’re not locked into a single style—you can go from raw, loose, and roomy to clinically precise at any moment.
Because ELE also includes extensive velocity layers and round-robin samples, every single drum hit is slightly different and responds naturally to the rest of the kit. This attention to detail is what lets you program drums that feel truly alive, preserving the nuance and energy of a real drummer’s performance while giving you full control over how much bleed (and thus how much raw realism) you want to inject into your mix.
One of the things that can be annoying is having to open up many plugins in various tracks when working with drums. We made it so that ELE is its own, complete package. You can change every aspect of the drum tone right within ELE itself.
With our new built-in mixer, you have everything you need:
Two EQ types
Saturation
1176-Style compression
Transient designer
ADSR controls
Two reverb sends (Non-Linear or Plate)
There is also a “Master” section on this new built-in mixer page where you can take your drum sound even further. Included here is:
Pultec-Style EQ
SSL-Style Bus Compression (with a parallel mix knob!)
Tape Saturation
Reverb controls
Instead of needing to load in extra plugins to tweak your sound, just use the massive, built-in mixer in ELE! You literally don’t need anything else to craft your perfect Metal drum sound.
It’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, we get it. Programming drums can be a terribly long, boring, and unfulfilling process.
Instead of needing to get a degree in drum programming, we figured it easier to give you amazing, high quality, and totally usable MIDI grooves that were played by real drummers.
These grooves have the feel and dynamics of a real drummer; all you have to do is find the groove that works best for your song and bam, done!
After all, isn’t part of classic rock that incredible groove? We think so, too.
Extinction Level Event Drums includes a great selection of grooves to get anyone started but if you want a lot more grooves to pick from and work with, you can grab any number of MIDI groove packs that we have made for our virtual drum plugins that give you both realism and choice. All our Drum Grooves are performed by real drummers to ensure that it doesn’t just sound human, it IS human.
If you prefer to write and custom tailor your drum parts exactly right for your song, we are giving anyone who buys Extinction Level Event Drums a 50% discount on the best course there is on programming drums for Metal. Scott Elliot’s Metal Drum Programming Mastery. After you place your order for ELE, you will receive an email with a special one time discount code for the course.
Do you want to create a specific drum map so you can play live on a MIDI controller? No problem. MIDI mapping is simple, easy, and fast. Within seconds you can totally remap the notes with ELE to fit your needs.
Additionally, you can re-route the audio outputs of ELE however you want, giving you full audio control of where you want signals to go in the DAW.
When you buy Extinction Level Event Master Kit, you’ll get not only an amazing Kontakt Drum Library, but you’ll get an entire arsenal of TCI files of the shells that you can use with Steven Slate Trigger 2. This will make it super simple for you to replace any recorded drums with the sound of ELE. (Owning a copy of Trigger 2 is required to use TCI files.)
Extinction Level Event runs on Kontakt Player by Native Instruments, which means it’s quick and easy to load it into your DAW.
Once loaded, you have a number of ready-to-go mix-ready presets that can get you started off with a bang. These are perfect for general songwriting or, hell, just use them in the final mix; why not!
Every page of the ELE instrument has been thoroughly designed and everything you need is literally one click of a button. No more menu diving, no more hunting for settings, less time looking for great sounding drums and more time playing with great sounding drums!
Here are a few examples of ELE in action in a verity of genres. All of the demos are done just using stock presets included with Extinction Level Event.
Unfortunately, there is no way for us to offer a demo version of Extinction Level Event Drums. This is a limitation by Native Instruments and Kontakt as a platform, at least currently.
Yes. It doesn’t matter when you buy ELE–you’ll always get free updates to the latest version. From the smallest bug fix to the biggest feature addition, you’ll be able to get updates for free and enjoy the latest and greatest version of ELE forever.
We offer a few courses over at Spectre Academy that teach you everything you need to know about making the best possible programmed drums. We highly recommend any of our drum programming courses if you want the best possible sounding drums. We even have special discounts on select courses for those who grab a copy of ELE :).
No. Extinction Level Event can be used with the Kontakt Player without any loss of functionality. You do not need the full version of Kontakt! You can download it from within Native Access when you install ELE.
Extinction Level Event will work in any DAW that supports the Kontakt Player. This means that if you can load a VST, VST3, AU, or AAX plugin format into your DAW – then you can use the Kontakt Player and as such, Extinction Level Event.
After you complete your order we will send you a license key. The download and installation are all handled via Native Access which you can download here. Once you are in Native Access, just add your key, and away you go.
TCI files are designed specifically for use within Steven Slate Trigger 2.0. They provide an easy way to accurately replace or augment existing drum tracks with accurate dynamics. So if you happen to have Trigger 2 and you want to use ELE on an existing drum performance, we have you covered! Once you complete your order, you will find them waiting for you in your account under “My Downloads.”
