From Gojira’s pick scrapes to Knocked Loose’s hell tone and beyond, horrid noises are crucial ingredients to stank face-inducing modern metal riffage.
There’s a plethora of ways to achieve such tones, but Australian metalcore band Alpha Wolf have sought to make such nightmarish sounds more accessible than ever – and their answer lies in the brand-new 'The Noise' pedal.
Crafted in partnership with Columbus, OH-based pedal maker Tallon Electric, The Noise's, er, noise-scaping is based on the DigiTech Whammy tricks that have become crucial to the band’s violent sound over the years.
More specifically, it's centered around the drop-tune side of the pedal. Two momentary switches, for octave up and double octave up, sit at its base, and there are non-descript dials for Panic, Chaos, Speed, and Rise.
While it’s unclear how these dials manipulate the effect, various demo videos give the impression that they are for dialing in chorus, flanger, and ring modulation effects, respectively. The Rise knob, meanwhile, dictates how quickly the effect punches the user – and their listeners – in the face.
It’s been described as “the most disgusting pitch-shifting pedal I’ve ever had” by YouTuber and Carcosa riff-monger Andrew Beana, who is a pro when it comes to forging riffs you’d never take home to meet your parents. He too reached the same conclusion regarding its mysterious dials.
“Even though you don't know what each knob does, it doesn't really matter,” he says. “The whole point of this thing is to twist knobs and see what disgusting noises you can come up with.”
Indeed, its application is meant to be anything but musical, in truth, so it’s arguably better to go in blind with the pedal and tailor its banshee tweaks to your liking.
The pedal was thoroughly road-tested over six months to perfect its face-contorting recipe. Alpha Wolf have called it “the pedal we’ve forever been searching for and it simply did not exist”.
It takes a standard 9V power supply, but cannot be run on batteries. Standing at 4.7" x 3.75" x 1.75", it's a little larger than a standard pedal, meaning slotting it onto pedalboards may take a little bit of work – but it's a price worth paying if you're looking for more disgust in your rig.
Available to order today for $245, it has an estimated shipping date of December 13.
Head to Tallon Electric for more.
