u/Anomander_ie

Just discovered them on The Flenser’s Instagram page. They’re dropping an album with them in October. Really digging this first single there’s a “proggy” vibe to it with the weird time signatures. Lovely drumming

Hi folks, do not sleep on this album! It’s the band’s first in 10 years, and it’s very good. FFO: Alcest, Sylvaine, Oathbreaker

Here’s a link to Bandcamp

After being a silent lurker here I’m excited to finally share my 1st pedalboard! It was a bit of a journey as you can read below. I’ve always been primarily a vocalist and favoured the no-brainer practicality of using a multi-fx. But in my current blackgaze / shoegaze / post-metal band I am also playing guitar full-time and got the itch to build a proper pedalboard and achieve the big sound I had in mind. I took a deep dive to learn everything I needed to before buying the pedals – I ordered all of those pictured (except for the Maw) in the space of 2 weeks, including the board, the power supply and patch cables so I had to be smart with the expenses. I had the following brief in mind:
- the whole board needs to fit in a carry-on cabin bag for Ryan Air flights (from Ireland this is a must)
- Ampless, straight to PA rig so I needed a compact, no frills and no fx amp / cab modeller
- My OBNE Maw vocal pedal had to fit on the same board (obviously not part of the loop but all carried as a single unit)
- 9 pedals max, including the Maw
- Room for a loop switcher for single stomp changes while singing (this one took me the longest to figure out which one to buy. Ultimately I went for the Patch Kommander, no midi)

The two more expensive pedals I got were the Walrus Melee Wall of Noise and the Strymon Blue Sky, which I wanted for years, the others are more modest. A great find was the Klowra Everlast Delay which has so many options, is very compact and with gorgeous artwork. Will defo watch this brand, they have some serious products all reasonably priced. The Mooer X2 is my amp and cab sim, it cost me a mere €65 almost brand new, and it stays untouched as the clean channel. The distortion comes only from the pedals – the Melee (fuzz + reverb with optional wall of noise) and the TC Fangs (high gain, surprisingly good for a cheap pedal). Both run blended in parallel via the Boss LS2 – unfortunately a necessity as the Melee did not take stacking distortions well nor it is heavy enough on its own. Had to ditch my EQ to make room for the LS2, and no room left for noise gate. Once my finances recover I plan to replace the Fangs with the Empress Heavy Menace which is meant to sound fantastic and comes with a gate function, and beautiful artwork on top of that. The budget tuner and compressor are doing the job well enough too. I play a Gretsch Baritone tuned in Drop G, and this rig is sounding absolutely huge at rehearsals 😁 I’m delighted with the result so far and had a lot of fun diving deep into this world in such a short period of time. And I’m not gonna lie, some of my choices were motivated by aesthetics as much as the sound, I’m a Graphic Designer so pedals with ugly fonts, boring colours and bad artwork were avoided as much as possible. I may yet ditch that compressor for that reason alone when I can 😂 anyway, that’s my story! Feel free to comment, I found a lot of helpful advice here and in other online forums, youtube channels etc and I’m grateful for everything!