The traditional alternating blast splits the work between snare and kick — one hits, then the other, then back again. The bomb blast stacks them: snare and kick land simultaneously on every 16th note. The result is a wall of sound, twice as dense as a regular blast and half as forgiving — every hit is exposed, and any flam between hand and foot is instantly audible.
This style is most associated with brutal death metal and grindcore, and it sits in the vocabulary alongside the alternating blast and the gravity roll. The technique is straightforward; the discipline is in the alignment. The non-dominant foot has to match the dominant hand's volume and its placement, sub-millisecond. There is nowhere for sloppiness to hide.
Build Order
- Practise hand and foot together at quarter notes first. Walk up to 8ths only when every quarter is a single attack, not a flam.
- Then 16ths at moderate tempo (♩=120-140). The hand pattern is still a normal single-stroke roll — alternating sticking R L R L — but every note is doubled by a kick.
- The faster you go, the more the kick wants to drift behind the snare. Record yourself; the recording will show the gap.
- The "moving" version (alternating bars of snare-only and kick-only 16ths) trains the limbs to hold their own grid without the partner.
Listening
- Suffocation — bomb blasts as a section device.
- Devourment — the slamming-death evolution of the technique.
- Krisiun — Max Kolesne running bomb blasts at extreme tempo.
Exercises
1 — Bomb Blast at Moderate Speed
Every 16th: snare and kick together. Sticking R L R L for the snare, R L R L for the feet — but the two pairs must line up. If you hear a flam, slow the metronome until the attacks merge into a single sound. This is alignment training before it's a speed exercise.
2 — Bomb Blast at Extreme Speed
Same pattern, ♩=200. At this tempo the hand technique becomes finger-driven (the wrist can't move that fast) and the foot technique becomes ankle-only or slide. The flam is the enemy — listen for any separation between hand and foot. Four bars at this tempo is a workout; eight bars is the goal.
3 — Alternating Bomb Bar (Snare-Only / Kick-Only)
The notation shows bar 1 — snare 16ths over kick 16ths. In practice, repeat this exercise as two-bar phrases: bar 1 = snare-only 16ths (rest the foot), bar 2 = kick-only 16ths (rest the hand). When that's clean, combine them into the bomb-blast version shown here. The decoupling drill teaches each limb to keep its own grid alive when the partner drops out.