Best Distortion Pedals for Metal: 6 Face-Melting Pedals to Unleash Hell

I took out my humbucker-equipped Ibanez, plugged it right into my 50-watt tube head, and, as soon as I turned the pedal ON, whole hell was unleashed. The controls at hand are very easy to navigate. It’s the standard but with a twist. You get level and gain with a 3-band EQ, but you also get a frequency knob that controls the mid knob’s sweep range. I’ll get into it in a minute, but it works wonders.

The pedal also offers two buttons, one for a very usable noise gate and another for (brutally) scooping mids. So, I started fiddling with the knobs, and the first thing that came to me was “Cowboys from Hell” by Pantera. I moved the range around and fiddled with the mids knob, and soon I was playing “Five Minutes Alone,” and both times, the guitar sounded era correct.

The grain of the distortion is quite particular; it’s something you would expect from the ‘90s metal scene. I was playing Chaos AD by Sepultura in no time, working the rest of the EQ. The bass and treble are very sensitive, and with the bass between noon and three o’clock and the treble at noon, it was metal heaven. Believe me, this thing chugs.

Full of courage, I strapped on the SG with a smile and went for some early metal tones and thrash sounds. I couldn’t make it bark enough, though. There’s just too much gain; you can’t dial back from too much; you start at too much. Also, the scoop button feels a little artificial. I would say that it’s a blend of feeling artificial and not sounding real enough either.

Beyond those very specific tones, I was able to cover a very wide range of sounds. The mid control and mid sweep are absolute winners. So, if you’re after modern metal tones, this is a good way to go.

The elite-level Waza Craft pedals are the perfect twist for a line of pedals that has seen more musicians go from bedroom to arena than any other. Yes, Boss pedals are built like a tank, deliver great sounds, and are affordable for the working musician.

This isn’t just an all-analog, built-in-Japan, fancier version of the Metal Zone. It’s a reworking of the concept with a much more varied palette of sounds than the original. It’s more like two pedals in one.

You get the same basic controls from the traditional MT-2, but with two different modes. Toggling between the two of them is something you can do from a silver flicker switch right below the knobs. The rest is the same, two regular knobs for volume and gain, and two dual knobs for highs, lows, mids, and mid frequency. This means you can adjust the mids and where the mids get their bump or cut.

Now, one thing I learned with this pedal is that it’s one of the few artifacts in history made for playing metal that serves the rule “less is more”. Mostly, when you get metal-oriented gear, the motto is “more is more, less is a bore,” so gain knobs go up to eleven. The thing with the standard mode of the MT-2 is that if you push it too high above noon, you’ll end up losing the guitar to a swarm of bees trapped in a jar with the lid on.

Moving the switch to custom, things get tighter and crushing. You have enough firing power in the midrange to change the tone entirely. I was able to go from “And Justice for All” to “The Memory Remains” and the pedal worked the change of decade flawlessly with me. Furthermore, I went for the all-scooped tone of the glam era, and I was playing “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Mötley Crüe right away.

The first thing that I did when plugging it in was engaging the traditional solo mode with everything at noon, and I was blown away. This pedal took my clean amp and turned it into a face-melting, powerful force that can cut through a dense mix.

But let’s start from the beginning, shall we? This pedal offers six big knobs for gain, output, a 3-band EQ, and weight. Below the big knobs, another row contains the gate threshold, the mid frequency control, and the toggle knob for the three modes. There are also two footswitches for the gate and the effect ON or bypassed.

The weight knob is literally a high-pass filter, so it has a drastic effect on the low-end. I fetched my Ibanez and turned the tube head ON. I started playing on the Lite(ish) mode, this pedal’s subtlest setting. With the gain knob at nine o’clock or below, you get a nice crunch that’s grainy but not too distorted. You do get nice compression and a tight bottom, but you can play mildly overdriven stuff and classic licks. I went for stuff like “The Boys are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy, for example, and it was good.

The heavy mode makes things more interesting, and the distortion at hand gets meaner and more abundant. The EQ also changes, and by dialing back the mids and cranking lows and highs, I got a nice, scooped sound to play classic thrash that was very believable. The chugging is great, and the leads got so much edge they cut through.

I dialed some mids to make it sound more modern, and by the time I set the toggle to heavier, things got creamy, tight, grainy, and with so much gain, I could have surfed the distortion wave and gotten an Olympic medal. I found it great for solos and pushing the guitar completely into a war zone. I tuned the sixth string down to D and played some righteous Silverchair and Sepultura.

After that, I added some delay and went for some shredding (the doctor said it’s good for my metal soul). The pedal remained tight, although it was distorted beyond belief.

Perhaps, the one thing I would request from Empress is to make the modes footswitchable.

Speaking of which, the noise gate is as handy as it gets, and it can be engaged for verses and disengaged for solos, so you will never lose a bit of sustain.

If you’re after a very versatile, mean distortion, and this fits the budget, trying it is a must.

I began my test with everything on 10. I know, I’m usually not like that, I tend to go gradually, but when you have a pedal like this in front of you, you want to know just how far it goes.

Well, everything in ten in the normal mode is perfect for Swedish Death and Black Metal fans. You have that dark, chainsaw-like, thick wall of distortion that’s so heavy it can bring spirits back from the dead. It resembled the (in)famous Boss Heavy Metal or HM2.

After getting that out of the system, I calmed down a little and set everything at noon, level, distortion, and the four-band EQ, leaving the mode switch set to Burn instead of Normal.

The result wasn’t as extreme, but much more versatile. I could play stuff by the big four: Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth, and it all sounded tight, powerful, and big enough to fill a stadium. Moreover, without moving any knobs, I went for the normal mode, and the thing got even more classic. By lowering the gain back to about 9 o’clock, I got some tones that would have made Deep Purple members proud.

Furthermore, EHX did something strange here; they used a bass-pedal trick to clean up the signal. Yes, just like with a bass fuzz, you can dial in the amount of dry guitar you want in your final mix. This helps retain clarity and avoid mud, regardless of the guitar and the gain level. Speaking of gain, the built-in noise gate is very handy when summoning creatures from another dimension, AKA, cranking the pedal.

If the Hell Melter isn’t enough for you, don’t worry, because the boosted signal can take everything from 11 to 12, propelling your playing forward. It’s too bad that you can’t adjust the boost level from the outside. To do it, you need to turn a little screw that’s underneath the pedal’s backplate. It goes from 0 to 10dB, but it would be really handy to adjust it to the room (and the drummer’s mood) every night.

Yes, I tried it, of course, but the boost won’t work alone; it only works on top of the engaged pedal. It could have been a good stand-alone feature, but it isn’t.

This is a big, bulky pedal with a ton of sounds and options at your disposal. Whether you’re after Swedish chainsaw tones, classic metal, or modern mayhem, this pedal can do it all, so give it a try.

Did they nail it? Let’s find out!

Again, humbuckers and a 50-watt tube amp with just this pedal between the two. To begin with, I set all knobs at noon and let the guitar’s volume knob wide open. I had to double-check if my hair hadn’t gone big and my feet didn’t have Texan boots because it was instant, effortless, punchy, and creamy Sunset Boulevard tones.

The BE-OD offers volume, gain, treble, bass, presence, and tight knobs. As you’d expect, every knob does what it says. In case you’re wondering, the tight knob is a high-pass filter that… well… tightens your sound by clearing the low-end.

Speaking of low-end, this thing seriously chugs. I mean, there’s enough gain in this pedal to melt the North Pole and then some. However, all the gain you find on this pedal is brown, grainy, punchy, and very Marshall-like. You can’t achieve those super scooped or extremely modern tones because the mids are like those of a Marshall: present and evil.

The EQs are active, so you can boost or cut, and the presence knob, along with the volume of the guitar, became a very dynamic combination that allowed me to go from mild to mayhem by just adjusting the guitar’s volume pot.

If you want to tame the beast and turn this smoking pureblood stud into an overdrive pedal, you can do so by trimming down the gain from the inside with a screwdriver. That way, you can make it sound more like an overdrive pedal. It’s too bad that it’s not a mode you can switch from the outside, because it’s like driving a different car; the relationship with the level knob changes drastically.

So, for those who want to rock stuff like The Cult, Mastodon, Alice in Chains, and songs from the glam era like Bon Jovi, Mötley, or even Dokken, you’re covered. If you’re in search of versatility and extreme tones, then you might as well keep looking.

With everything at noon, the pedal does a muddy, fizzy, overly distorted tone that can help you play old-school thrash metal. Especially if you scoop the mids and crank the lows. I was playing “Battery” and “One” easily in no time.

Although the gain knob doesn’t change the level of it all that much, the mids knob is extremely sensitive. It’s almost as if the guitar would surface in the mix as you increase its value. The bass, on the other hand, goes from muscular and fat (ideal for chugging) to non-existent, making the sound fizzy, with no body or sustain.

The volume knob is good to tame the beast or to use this pedal as a boost from the dry signal. I would say its sweet spot is between one and three o’clock. That’s where it gets cooking, but it’s not much higher than the clean amp.

As for the sounds, well, you get what you paid for. Don’t expect fancy, utterly tweakable sounds; this is a beginner-oriented pedal. Can it do the metal thing and give you hours of fun? The answer is yes. However, I would add it’s like the SD-quality version of the real deal. It sounds fizzy, floppy, and utterly distorted, but not defined, tight, or punchy.

So, for playing Burzum covers, having fun, and creating some wild, extreme sounds, this pedal is great. If you want more options and an HD sound, you should look somewhere else.