Wouldn't use them as an example of recording excellence.

They may in fact enter the hall of fame for the most overcompressed recordings in history.

8)

Drum replacement.
What you hear in those recordings (along with the extreme brickwall limiting of the tracks) are (near as I can tell) composites of multiple sounds.
The closest I've come to the kick sound was when I put a gated distortion and low freq tone together and mixed them into the original track.

You'll notice that the sounds of the kick, snare, etc often sound pretty close to exactly the same over the course of a number of their albums (Justice, Black, Load, Reload)? It's pretty difficult to be that consistent, if you ask me.

If I'm wrong, I'd love for someone to correct me.

Hi,
I'd say hang up a wet blanket, hit it with a yard stick, and mic it with a D6. ;)

Seriously though... a D6 pointed more toward the outer edge of a pinstripe, tuned so low that the wrinkles just barely disappear. Then mute it with a pillow. A rubber beater wouldn't hurt either. The slap is probably coming from the batter side, and the sub is probably coming from a very thick ebony resonant side. That's probably why there is no mid in his kick sound... 2 mics. Then compress/limit the crap out of it like they said.

I've seen video of Lars in the studio and they had 3 mics on the snare. One on top, one on the bottom, and a SDC pointed at the shell. I know that for a fact. Just more ideas.

As mentioned above, sound replacement is pretty much the standard for Heavy Metal these days so maybe you could even find a lone kick hit on one of the Metallica records and trigger that.

Speaking about MetallicA's sound.
Has anyone listened closely to the snare in St. Anger?

That thing is brutal, like it was hit with Thors hammer inside the worlds best sound chamber. The ringing around it is amazing.

I saw Lars live once, he's a lot different live :P

I also saw "A year and a half in the life of pt1" and watched as Lars cut drums... Then I watched as Bob Rock (throws up a little) would hack into the tape.

I read that they took down on the all the acoustic treatements and put plywood up on all the walls in the tracking room.

I think they must of compressed (at least in parrallel) with a DBX 160, it has that sound to it.

With that compressor, you could make a pizza box sound like a big fat kick drum.

That probably what they did.