I am become Death, destroyer of tones
In the 2013 film Now You See Me, J. Daniel Atlas (played by Jesse Eisenberg) leads a coalition of mastermind thief magicians in a series of heists robbing the world's richest with FBA agent Dylan Rhodes (played by Mark Ruffalo) hot on their tail. The magicians, colloquially known as "The Four Horsemen," each specialize in their own methods of magic from escape artistry to card tricks to pickpocketing to mentalism. With a group name referring to the biblical Four Horsemen, the film posits that this team can only be understood as masters of a form of wizardry so powerful that it warrants reference to the apocalyptic. The series premiered a sequel, Now You Don't, in November of this year – though not before releasing the original film's direct follow-up, Now You See Me 2, in 2016.
Today, we're talking similarly about a couple of things. Death By Audio, harbingers of tonal end-times that they are, today have dropped their brand-new Destroyer Series pedals. We're talking about destruction, a multi-pronged plan of attack, and some magic squeezed in here and there. In the Venn diagram covering the Death By Audio Destroyer Series and the fantastical world of Now You See Me, there is some overlap. A bafflingly redundant series of titles is not among it. For that, DBA already has a leg up. Let's talk about it.
These are the Death By Audio Thee Treble Overload, Moonbeam Phaser, and Dream Station Destroyer Series pedals.
Destruction Inc.
Introducing the Death By Audio Destroyer Series Effects
Let's set the stage. Death By Audio is New York's finest band of noise merchants. Having been at this for so long, they've built up for themselves a concise catalog of effects and a ravenous fanbase of droners, doomers, shoegazers, and the like, with duct-taped boards and itchy trigger fingers when it comes to their pedals. Truly, DBA is a brand with a pension for sonic punishment as they craft some of the best distortions, modulators, and "Is that what it's supposed to sound like?"-inators you can find.
Most often, you find a Death By Audio creation with an imposing size and an in-depth sonic story. What if things were a little more scaled down? This is the mission of their latest line of effect pedals, the Destroyer Series. These three compact devices load in incredibly expressive and effective tones to either get across a big, musical idea simply and work well with others in bigger rigs. Totally, the DBA Destroyer Series is a welcomed change of pace for the iconic brand.
The Destroyer series kicks itself off with three unique effects that all share a common DBA aesthetic and profile. We've got the Dream Station reverb and delay, the Moonbeam Phaser, and the Thee Treble Overload boost. These pedals all operate in intuitive and streamlined ways to work as quick fixes to common* musical problems. Let's get into each of these pedals individually, talk about their designs and sounds, then call it a day. How's that sound?
Or sometimes not-so-common
Prepare For Treble
Death By Audio Thee Treble Overload Boost Design and Tones
There is a reason why some things stay special. A lot of times, that's because they didn't last forever. We can absolutely understand this with DBA's Thee Treble Overload.
Thee Treble Overload might sound familiar to some truly dedicated Death By Audio fans. Casting our net back to 2013*, DBA collaborated with John Dwyer of the psychedelic rock band Thee Oh Sees for his own take on the Death By Audio Fuzz War – Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload. The model in question paired DBA's monstrous Fuzz War with a formidable onboard treble boost. Their resulting collaboration blew down the doors in no small measure due to the muscle behind the boost. Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload then became the stuff of legend with an extremely limited production run.
The release year of the first entry in the illustrious, celebrated, and beloved Now You See Me series, as we all know
Today's Thee Treble Overload is a spiritual return to this early 2010s moment. This Thee Treble Overload comes together as an enormously powerful treble boost effect that splits control between two dials. The first, "Boost", harnesses the pedal's treble boosting power from a mold-breaking bite near its minimum to an unavoidable clip near its max. Thee Treble Overload has a cool sixty decibels of gain behind it – more than enough to do whatever you gotta do – that is then softened or spiked with the "Limit" control that adjusts the overall output of the effect.
Thee Treble Overload is designed to be paired up. Meant to carve out bass frequencies and introduce that special kind of DBA pizzazz, Thee Treble Overload gets loud, noisy, and spikey to get its point across and get its job done. Thee Treble Overload is not your typical treble boost, fair warning, and that's entirely the point. For someone cooking up a special DBA-inspired stew, Thee Treble Overload proves to be a crucial ingredient.
Waxing and Waning
Death By Audio Moonbeam Phaser Design and Tones
Stuff isn't always as chaotic as something like Thee Treble Overload would have you believe. Sometimes it's as predictable as the phases of the moon. Case in point: the Death By Audio Moonbeam Phaser.
Phasers can be tricky. They can do too much. They can do not enough. Maybe your phaser isn't the make-or-break of your board, but you'd still like to have one... you get the idea. The Moonbeam Phaser fills a fairly blind spot in the phaser pedal market: Phasers with just the right amount of stuff going on. A "Goldilocks" phaser? Maybe we'll start saying that. Maybe not. We'll work on it.
The Moonbeam Phaser punches up with two control dials and a six-way rotary dial. Our two control dials harness the speed and intensity of our phase shifting, no surprises there. Where the Moonbeam Phaser makes itself known is its rotary switch that allows for one- to six-stage phasing with options for one-stage, six-stage, and all the other stages in between. Where these six different phase stages land us are in entirely different tonal palettes with entirely different use cases. Signified by the pedal's LED display that changes color in accordance to the number of stages selected, we've got an incredibly intuitive way to get into a phase.
From red to indigo, each of the Moonbeam's six phase stages creates unique and usable phase modulation effects. Across the spectrum, we get classic orange-box-style phasers to filtered pseudo-tremolos to shimmering rotary choruses to things completely new altogether. The pedal's Frequency speed and Depth intensity controls responsively show themselves through the LED display as it dances and warps in response to your settings. Perfect for cutting quickly to your favorite phaser sounds or finding out what all the fuss is about phasers in the first place, the Moonbeam Phaser checks each box.
Unknown Transmission
Death By Audio Dream Station Reverb/Delay Design and Tones
In the Death By Audio Destroyer Series, their Dream Station delay and reverb is the pedal with the most going on. It is out-the-gate the effect with the most room for customization and interpretation, though of course, with a blissfully simple control scheme at the helm.
If you subscribe to the DBA school of noisemaking, effects like reverb and delay are fairly prominent players. Though DBA's echo and resonance machines can get fairly involved, again, this is part of why we have the Destroyer Series. The Death By Audio Dream Station is a very intuitive and powerful way to introduce DBA-style echoes into your rig. What that means is that the Dream Station punches well above its weight class with its two simplified onboard effects.
First, the Dream Station features a one-dial reverb effect that quickly leans cavernous. The reverb scales up pretty quickly from a light splash to a full wash. For a real set-and-forget kind of reverb, the Dream Station cuts right to the chase. The pedal's reverb is matched by a delay effect. Onboard, this delay features simplified Time and Feedback controls and a three-way tone switch. Working with this delay, Death By Audio bestows upon its players some real echoing power in the Dream Station's compact packaging. The pedal's Feedback control ramps up pretty quickly towards self-oscillation. If that's your cup of tea when it comes to delays, just move the Feedback dial to the last line segment near two o'clock.
The Dream Station additionally loads in three distinct flavors of delay with its three-way tone switch. For three varying tones, this DBA creation features Bright, Full, and Dark tone modes for tape, digital, and analog-style delay sounds, respectively. These options enable some classic Death By Audio noisiness when it comes to lingering delay trails for overwhelming digital repeats, undulating analog repeats, or decaying tape repeats. However you need to set your ambiance, the Dream Station dials in.
Destroy, Destroy
Death By Audio Destroyer Series Further Functions
As we start wrapping this up, let's talk about some of the things that elevate this series and tie it all together. For one, every pedal in the Destroyer Series is fully stereo capable. Though the pedals are only fitted with one input and one output, each one is a stereo TRS-enabled connection that can function with mono TS cables or stereo TRS cables. The Destroyer Series is then in practice fully adaptable to any number of stereo-minded rigs and effects, really opening up the field for the series in a big way. Additionally, each Destroyer Series effect is powered with your standard nine-volt center negative power supply. This is a series highly compatible with plenty of power behind it. Streamlined, intuitive, expressive, and with that all-important element of oomph, what more could you ask for?
Death By Audio Destroyer Series Final Thoughts
The Death By Audio Destroyer Series skillfully executes on its mission. Individually, each pedal in the series effectively fulfills its purpose as a smaller-scaled, DBA-style encapsulation of its effect. Each effect works as a one-and-done representation of its respective effect with the brand's iconic artistic outlook at the helm. Together, the Destroyer Series accomplishes quite a bit. The Death By Audio Destroyer Series fills a welcomed spot in their catalog (and the modern market at large) for very quick, intuitive, and effective sonic experiences with the brand's unique, cacophonic spin at every turn. Whether you're after that one specific effect to fill out your board or for a way to try out Death By Audio's patented brand of zaniness for the first time, the Destroyer Series affords you either opportunity.
