yeah, filtered noise can be used to create metal drum sounds. the classic 808ish hats are done like that. on the virus the color parameter comes handy when designing such sounds, you can always assign it to a soft knob for proper tweakage. hand pass and band pass filters are good for this, each providing a fairly wide range of sound. it's all about the sweet spots and percursive envelopes really. then, a little distortion - more like saturation/exciter for this kind of use - along with the envelope (!!!) doesn't hurt either.
fm can indeed provide a wide range of metalic sounds and so can the ringmodulator or both combined.
then it's all about imagination. you can modulate the "OSC VOL" parameter to use the fm/ring mod sound just on the beggining (transient) of the sound, followed by a lush noise tale washed in a deep/cold reverb. for this kind of patch, you probably won't have any lfo (cycled) modulation going, so you can use one in "envelope mode" to turn down the "OSC VOL" while raising the noise volume and possibly even sweeping it's colour a bit, maybe even raise or lower the resonance? and - last but not least - add the reverb into the mix (reverb send parameter) for a lushy reverberated sound. reverb with a pre delay and a small decay can sound like a blury echo (something like that), and bringing it closer to the original sound can (if tweaked good) sound like the splashy sound of the pedal hats in a synthesizer kind of way!
lots of stuff to experiment with! have fun!
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