If there’s one piece of hardware or software that I’d like to see have a resurgence in 2025, it’s the humble drum machine.

There’s something satisfying about tapping a pad and hearing a drum sound. There’s something even more satisfying about tapping hundreds of pads and hearing hundreds of unique drum sounds. But, what if there was a way for a drum machine to create infinite sounds?

I’m happy to report that there is one: RANDOM Metal by BEATSURFING.

Let’s backtrack for a minute. Before RANDOM Metal, there was RANDOM – a bass synthesizer co-designed with Phazz. It’s a sound generator that uses different types of “matter” – wavetables, essentially – to create different timbres of sound. The highlight of that plugin is the RANDOM button, which effectively brings a level of unpredictability to the sound played by the synthesizer every time you hit it.

Now, the team at BEATSURFING have taken that same random engine and refocused it to be a drum synthesizer in collaboration with Phazz and Hermutt Lobby. It’s so much more than a drum machine: thanks to the 40+ matters included in the plugin and the ability to randomize almost everything, it’s more like a drum creator with no limits rather than a drum machine.

Let’s play around with RANDOM Metal.

This matter kind of looks like the black stuff from Venom.

Layout

RANDOM Metal has a pretty simple layout, all things considered. It’s highlighted by a visualization of the matter in the center of the plugin. I’d like to give a shoutout to whoever created these visuals: they’re sick. They help you feel like you’re actually using a rare mineral to play a sound. The 3D modeling, coloring, and overall quality of them is nothing short of perfect. They also correlate to specific kinds of drums – some matters are labeled as cymbals, others as snares, and so forth.

To the left is the legendary RANDOM button. Hit that and you’ll change the sound. You can control how much the sound is changed whenever you hit it by adjusting the Deviance knob. The more deviance, the more change.

Below that are four knobs. “Bleed” has a unique effect on each matter, so you’ll just have to continue trying it to see what it does. “Pitch” adjusts the entire pitch of the matter, “Stretch” adjusts the length of the sound, and “Gain” handles the entire plugin’s volume. These are universal knobs, so any change you make here will affect the entire plugin. That’s important because of the next feature.

Every time you initialize a matter, you are given 12 drum pads. This is where the plugin can be likened to a drum machine: you can go into each of those machines and adjust an instance of the matter.

For example, if you want to make the sound that plays from the first pad high pitched and the sound that plays from the second pad low pitched, you can do that by clicking on a pad and adjusting the knobs on the right hand side next to the pads. Please note that you’ll have to click “Advanced” on the bottom right hand of the plugin to see those.

The last few knobs handle panning, stereo field, and the shape of the sound at its loudest points and its quietest points. That was really cool to discover. You can have a sound’s high frequencies be almost entirely cut at its loudest point, and fully emphasized at its quietest point. There’s also a tiny slider near the pads that will allow you to play your sound on a MIDI keyboard, and a second randomizer entirely for the parameters on the right in case you like the core part of your sound but want to play with its post-processing.

That’s pretty much everything. It’s super easy to traverse and even easier to make crazy sounds, thanks in part to the randomizer button. I also like how it’s possible to store 12 different drums at once in each instance thanks to the drum pads. They’ll all be coming from the same sound, but could all sound completely different.

Now that we’ve gotten the layout out of the way, how does this thing work in practice?

Usage

Oh man. This thing is SPECIAL.

I have never had this much fun with drums before. Every part of this plugin just oozes producer joy. I found myself dragging and moving around the matters just to gaze in awe at how they looked, then just started hitting the random button and playing.

As I played more and more, I found some hidden features. You can map features of RANDOM Metal to your MIDI for instant adjustment. There’s an undo button in case you don’t like the randomization that you got. You can make actual tones with this thing if you end up with a tonal shot-sounding percussion and turn on key tracking. You can drag your sounds out as WAV files by clicking on “drag to export.” There is a lot more here than meets the eye, and I had so much fun playing with it.

I think my favorite part is that you truly never know what you’re gonna get when you hit that button. It could be amazing, a sound you never realized you needed. It could be awful, too – that’s how randomization works, and that’s why there’s an undo button. But just because it’s so easy and fun to use, I can see RANDOM Metal becoming my drum sound design tool of choice as soon as tomorrow.

Here’s a little demo track I made with it. I used some existing presets from BEATSURFING that I randomized a few times to turn into new sounds. The result is a fun, dirty groove that has a tiny little melody over the top of it thanks to some tonal percussion.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

Drum sound design has never been easier.

This is about as revolutionary of a tool as I have seen for drum sound design. Now, you can make whatever you want, or completely randomize the whole process. You can even save your presets if you make something you like. It’s definitely going to change the game for sound designers.

It’s fun and easy to use.

Buttons and knobs. That’s it. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to make incredible drums with this plugin. I’m a pretty rudimentary drum sound designer, and even I was able to come up with some cool sounds.

Cons:

Be aware that it’s geared towards drums, and mostly drums.

Be wary that when you use this synth that it’s mostly for drums. Yes, you can make some tonal shots, but a spade is a spade: it’s a drum machine. This is not a bad thing, but definitely don’t go into using it thinking you’re using just another synthesizer.

It’s pricy.

RANDOM Metal retails at 150 USD. This is decently expensive, especially for a drum synth. With that being said, BEATSURFING is currently running a sale at press time where you can save up to 74% on a bundle that includes RANDOM Metal, and you can currently get it for 60 USD by itself. I don’t know how long these deals will last, so act fast if you want it.

There’s also no free trial, but they do offer a 14-day return policy.

Conclusion: Should you get it?

If you are an avid drum sound designer, or someone who just enjoys making cool sounds, then I think this would be a worthwhile purchase for you. BEATSURFING’s definitely put out a gem, and I’m so excited to continue using this plugin for weeks to come.

Buy RANDOM Metal here.

The post BEATSURFING RANDOM Metal Review: A Crazy Drum Machine With Endless Possibilities appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.