Help matching/creating a drum beat for a riff

[goroth]

Dudes,

I've got a verse thing going on in a song I'm writing, but I'm trying to program some drums for it and I can't get the right feel into it. So ah... help?

The verse is around 124 bpm, and one guitar is playing 16th notes, every other note pulling off to an open string. Kinda staccato/mutey, no brutal distortion (sad face) just overdrive. The other guitar is playing arpeggios, where four or five notes are played (8th notes) and they ring out for the rest of the bar and the next one. Bit harder distortion on that track with some delay.

So that's all nice, but I really want to find a way to convey the sense of forward movement and speed that I feel when I hear it in my head, but instead it seems whatever I do ends up feeling kinda doomy and slow. I've tried a couple of different drum beats but can't get out of that sort of relaxed and melancholy feel. Tried putting the snare on every beat but even that just feels kinda slow and depressed, but with a snare on every beat. I don't really want to change the guitars (yet) as I don't hear them as being melancholy without drums - it's when I try to put a beat to it that it gets messed up.

Does anyone have any suggestions - either youtube links to check out what other bands have done, or for the drum inclined amongst you drum notation?

tl;dr
Want to create a beat around 120 bpm that feels like it has lots of forward momentum. Failing. Help wanted.

[Tristan]

Try lots of toms like a rumble and only add one snare in the end of the riff (or halfway) then change it around, still have the rumble on the toms but add like four snares fast after eachother in the end of the riff.
Does that make any sense?
Also listen to Converge - Axe To Fall (album), Isis - In the Absent of Truth (album), Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Article 3 (song) or The Sloganeer (song) and Keith Moon maybe.

[goroth]

Sorta...
16th notes?
On the same tom? Or ascending or descending?
And cymbals - just keep the pedal high hat going (8th notes??)

So many questions!

[Tristan]

Cymbals can be pretty erratic I think, throw some crashes through it maybe, if and wherever you feel like it, or put a fast hihat underneath maybe.
You can start off with 16th notes on different toms, start high and go low I'd say but also throw them around a little so don't just go from the highest to the lowest all the time.
If the 16th notes still sound too lame then try some 12th or 24th notes to fuck it up a bit, ghost notes (on toms as well as snares) can help too.
Basically make it sound as if the drummer is drunk (we all know they always are) and doesn't know what the fuck he's hitting but make it in relative tempo, I think that's what lots of cool drummers do.

[D.o.S.]

Take some D Beat and add snare rolls. Forward Momentum for days.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQwCVBQN1oM[/youtube]

And no, you might not be able to do that at 124 bpm.

[neonblack]

[YouTube]m.youtube.com/watch?v=WI8B5M1888o[/YouTube]

Four on the floor bro.

Someone help embed this bull.

[D.o.S.]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI8B5M1888o[/youtube]

Four on the floor bro.

Someone help embed this bull.

Full Motorik is always an option.