Sure, you can get a nice aggressive kick drum by distorting a sample or analog kick until it’s just a square wave. Why not just start with a square wave? Filtering? Nah, the speakers will handle that — and the blood pooling in your ears will take care of the rest.
If you used Master Zap’s “Stomper” in the 90’s you’ll feel right at home. The days of uploading samples to your Akai over MIDI SDS are over, my friend. A clock signal is all it needs.
The Hammer of God is a square-wave percussion generator (drum module) in a pedal case I use whenever I need a beat and only have a clock signal (or am too lazy to bother with a real drum machine). It can also be triggered with a 5V pulse, or manually.
Hear (and see) it in action here: