I keep listening to this guy:
And am wondering, is it even possible to replicate such harsh, distorted sounds on the A4?
Anything I’ve done doesn’t come even remotely close. 
Any general tips?
I don’t know for A4,
but with a Rytm with his sampler and FM sound engine, you can really do industrial music like this!
i don’t hear any analog synth sounds in there at all. if you want to make this kind of music you are much better off with the OT (or any sampler).
Yeah I agree with above. Octatrack all the way for that kind of sound. You could get vaguely similar stuff on A4 with extreme filtering/resonance/distortion with p-locking extreme sweeps etc. And lfo/fm stuff maybe too. But it would be waaay more work and still probably not nail this kind of industrial/glitch vibe…
+1 to all of the above. Octatrack is a better weapon for this sort of thing.
But… things that can make the A4/AK (I use the Keys) harsher:
As Callofthevoid mentioned, filtering, resonance, distortion, plocked sweeps.
Also, I can get some nasty metallic sounds by pushing the chorus feedback all the way negative. AM/sync can also help create “harsh” sounds. I have not messed around nearly enough with the new FM/tracking LFO features, but I’m sure you can get some nasty tones out of that. You may also want to mess around with p-locking effects, especially the reverb.
Then, I would also suggest that you make liberal use of changing patches per track. Part of what I hear there is a lot of choke group sounds, where one sound cuts off another. Again, that’s more sampler territory, but the A4 can kind of achieve this if the changing patches cut off one another.
But, again, sampler, and even then, the raw sounds sound more digital to me, more MnM territory, honestly. That said, the sound engine of the A4 is versatile, and you can push it toward doing things that a lot of other analog synths cannot.
I’ll be getting a Machinedrum sometime soon and hopefully be able to program/sample/resample such sounds. I was just wondering if I could get anywhere close with A4.
Thanks for the suggestions guys! I’ll definitely look into FM and other suggested parameters. As of now, I can’t get anywhere close the Cuckoo’s magic, but that’s due to complete inexperience when it comes to FM synthesis 
You want a rytm, octa, korg electribe sampler or MPC for that kind of metallic sample based music.
Check out Ansomes stuff, he’s doing a similar harsh industrial techno thing right now and uses a RYTM as core of his setup.
Main sound from this track is a big distorted hit, probably sampled from some movie score or sample library.
It’s almost impossible to replicate this on A4.
ya… these are not A4 kinda sounds…
however, if you wanna go HARSH with it, definitely check out the neighbor track routing thing.
basically, on track 1, do something, e.g. soundlocking a drum sequence.
then on track 2, choose NEI as the oscillator, turn it up. open the amp envelope, play/sequence some notes. then use the filter overdrive and mess around with things.
you’ll still hear the original, undistorted sound from track 1. reduce track 1 level to hear only the distorted signal from track 2… etc, you get the idea.
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Just to add my cent of knowledge …
I have got some nice harsh, crunchy sounds by using the feedback of VCO1 in combindation with parameters that have been already mentioned.
There is also the “metal-sync-mode” in the second page of VCO2.
VCO FM, VCO AM, and Filter FM can get you harsh sounds too.
Firstly, Rabit is fucking amazing. Hands down my best new artist discovery of the last year.
Secondly, I suspect he’s actually doing everything ITB. If you are deadset on Elektron hardware, the RYTM, Octatrack, and Machinedrum will get you closer.
Yellofier app for iOS devices produces these types of sounds effortlessly.
I’ve sampled that into the OT and achieved very similar results.