Pedal to the metal

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For $95, you can sound like Bathory. That is the premise of Dragonfly’s Black Metal Pedal, a tribute to the music’s first wave. The demonstration video here shows off suitably raw tones, though it’s hard to tell anything with YouTube’s audio quality. Note that the pedal’s controls are “Power,” “Hatred,” “Attack,” and “Chaos.”

This reminds me of DOD’s Buzz Box, a short-lived pedal in the ’90s that was inspired by Melvins’ Buzz Osborne. (“Even the president of DOD wondered why anyone would want such a pedal.”) Its controls were “Heavy,” “Buzz,” “Saw,” and “Thrust” (click image to enlarge). I vividly remember the Guitar World interview with Kim Thayil and Buzz Osborne where they talk about the pedal (full text here):

BUZZ: It’s called the Buzz Box, and it is put out by DOD. I had nothing to do with it. I mean, does my guitar really sound that bad? [laughs] The guys at DOD are kind of crazy; I have to give them credit for that. A guy there was always bugging me at shows about how we got the sound on the Eggnog record. I used this thing called a Blue Box, an octave divider from the early Seventies. So this guy says, “I want to design a pedal; we’ll call it the Buzz Box and get that sound out of it.” But it wasn’t so much that he wanted to do an endorsement or anything. I think he just likes the sound of it. So he came to one of our shows and looked inside the Blue Box. He kind of duplicated it and combined it with the Grunge Pedal in a new pedal. I have to admire DOD for putting out something that insane. Yes, the Buzz Box is totally worthless. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner. [laughs]

DigiTech has made a Death Metal Pedal. Its controls are rather generic: “Level,” “Low,” “Mid,” “High” (click image to enlarge). If I had my way, they would be: “Brutal,” “Slamz,” “Dying,” “Fetus.”

Finally, here is someone’s rendition of a hypothetical Grindcore Pedal. Its controls are “Gain,” “More Gain,” “Distortion,” and “More Distortion” (click image to enlarge). Even better would be “Hoak” (level), “Lilker” (bass), “Sharp” (mid), and “Burke” (high). But maybe a Brutal Truth Pedal is a bad idea. Burke might have the worst tone I’ve ever heard from a professional guitarist. You’d think he were using Bees In A Bucket (TM): The Second Wave Black Metal Pedal.