Drum triggers don't actually make the drums any easier to play, nor is it cheating, they just help keep the sound clear when the drummer is playing very fast (where some hits *may* sound muddy or inconsistent). Can also give a more 'punchy' sound. Almost every extreme metal album these days has drum triggering (Mithras' kits being, by their description "Triggered to fuck"), and Pete Sandoval's been using them for donkey's years. It's not actually a 'cheat' for drummers. Real cheating is the Lars Ulrich "Dyers Eve" drum looping.

Yeh drum triggers are just an easier way to get a clear sound out of everything, its not usually used in the "copy and paste" drums sense in the studio that many people think.

without letting the triggers stuff get out of control, triggers aren't 'cheating'.

a trigger is a small transducer you attach to the drum head and plug into a drum brain. when u hit the drum, the drum brain plays a sample. ddrum triggers are no different to any other triggers.

this allows you to have a diiferent sound for your drums than they actually sound like (i.e a really unrealistic overly punchy sound like mayhem use) or anything you'd want. most drummers tend to go for the usual hollow clicky death metal tones which are hard to achieve from mics.

triggers are notoriously hard to get working right. lets say you hit the drum slightly too soft, the trigger doesnt trigger. lets say you hit it too hard, it triggers twice etc.
you hit one drum, another drum triggers... its a nightmare let me tell you.

myths about drummers having really sensitive triggers are usualy utter crap, because used live oversensitively, the noise onstage of the guitars and bass would make the drum kit keep constantly missfiring throughout the set and random drum sounds would be firing off from nowhere.

the reason it's worth it, is that a properly triggered kit sounds the same (i.e exactly how you want it) every rehearsal and gig, and takes no time to get sounding good, as opposed to 2 soundmen faffing around with 16 mics for your entire kit, then soundchecking you for 2 hours in order to get an acceptable sound.

on 'worlds' we sampled some tom sounds from my drum kit, then mixed them with stock triggered sounds from my drum brain, then mic'ed the drums as well and mixed it together. The snare drum is mostly microphone and the bass drum is a totally triggered mixture of my bass drum sound and 2 sampled ones.

on 'forever...' we mic'ed the toms and used the generic brain sounds, the snare was also mostly mic'ed and the bass drum was the generic drum brain sound.

to give you an example of other albums using triggers: -

morbid angel gateways: -

"kit totally triggered, no mics apart from on cymbals"

morbid angel formulas: -

kit totally triggered, however toms and snare mostly mic'ed

most metal bands nowadays trigger bass drums, some bands who say "we dont use triggers" are unaware that in the studio, the sound engineer is busy triggering their mic'ed bass drum on the studion computer, so beware, no triggers on the drums doesnt mean no triggers.......