"If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything." - Christopher Guest as Count Rugen, 'The Princess Bride' (1987)
Health is wealth, as they say. Navigating through the day-to-day isn't easy. On top of all the morning traffic, recurring streaming subscriptions, and browning lettuce in your fridge you wished would last one more day, you have to manage wellness.
Well, when it comes to extreme musical ailments, we do have a new prescription to fill. Quick fixes in health don't come often, but for bland boards and ho-hum amplifiers, we can absolutely recommend a house call.
This is the Intensive Care Audio Death Drive.
Shop the Intensive Care Death Drive
A Doctor in the House
Introducing the Intensive Care Audio Death Drive
When it comes to fresh, exciting, and cutting-edge names in effect pedals, we have the work of Intensive Care Audio to turn to. The London-based brand has spent the last couple of years fine-tuning a diverse and unique lineup of pedals dedicated to the pursuit of weird, dynamic sounds that are infinitely expressive and endlessly inspirational. When you check in with The Doctor (also known as Intensive Care Audio founder Patrick Smith), you're getting an intense regimen fitted for curing common sonic ailments like Chronic Tonal Malaise, Excessive Aural Dryness, and Recursive Musical Monotony.
Across the Intensive Care Audio line, you find a number of drive devices that all play with highly intuitive yet strikingly dynamic interfaces. You can turn to Intensive Care Audio pedals like their Death Muff or Life Support for inspiring Muff-style fuzz and preamp and overdrive experiences, respectively, should compelling saturations be included in your treatment plan.
Today's Death Drive is one of Intensive Care Audio's most celebrated effects. Centered around a very interactive distorting effect experience, the Death Drive is a completely original and all-analog example of Intensive Care Audio mojo in motion. The Death Drive punches in with easily mixable and quickly inspirational tones that can range from a chunky, broken-up drive to an overblown fuzz that swings with the best of your most dastardly distortions. Let's get into some specifics.
An Apple a Day
Intensive Care Audio Death Drive Controls
The Intensive Care Audio Death Drive is a massively expressive and versatile drive effect. At the onset, we're dealing with a setup that really invites you to experiment – crank a knob here, nudge a knob there, see what happens. The whole Death Drive experience is centered around a pretty busy four-way conversation between gain, level, and signal-shaping controls that play incredibly well with one another. Highly interactive in pretty much every way, the Death Drive's controls stoke a unique distorted flame to serve as your board's sole distorted engine or as an add-on to play along with your other favorite drives. Let's talk some controls.
- Ego – Let's start here. Our Ego control sets the output level of the effect. The Death Drive is by nature a pretty high-output device. Where this lands us is with a volume control that is highly influential over the effect and very interactive with its gain-shaping counterparts. For now, just know that Ego allows the Death Drive to get pretty noticeable even before noon. The Death Drive's Ego plays a pretty pivotal role in the distorted character of the effect in total.
- Drive and Destruction – So, a bit of a two-for-one, here. A really unique element of the Death Drive is its two gain controls. Where you'd probably find a single distortion gain control on most other effect pedals, Intensive Care Audio hooks you up with two angles from which you can attack this distorted recipe. Though you can take on either of these gain-shaping controls any way you like, Destruction is framed as the primary gain control where you can fire up the effect first. Drive is then positioned as the "secondary" gain control as it further shapes the structure of the signal for added (or lessened) tonal nuance.
- Mood – We're not all morning people, but we're not all night owls, either. However you like your drives – sunny or shadowy – the Death Drive has you covered. Intensive Care Audio's Mood control shapes the frequency of your distortion to get brighter and sharper or dimmer and duller. The Death Drive was specifically designed to eschew any spots on the control where things could get boring or useless, so with that, the effect excels.
A Tonal Treatment
Intensive Care Audio Death Drive Tones
With the Death Drive, we're treated to a truly robust drive and distortion. The four-way conversation to which we alluded really comes to life with the effect firing on all cylinders. What we mean by that is that, when you're taking on the Death Drive, one of the best ways to experience it may very well be from the deep end.
Clicking on the Death Drive will quickly drop you into its unique distorting framework. With the highly responsive and interactive experience presented by the pedal's Ego, Drive, and Destruction controls, you're treated to a truly deep pool of tones to sift through. Starting even with Drive and Destruction both at zero, the Death Drive can be explored strictly through its Ego and Mood controls. These are obviously the pedal's lowest-gain offerings. Though the pedal's unique gain structure is pretty effectively worked out of the equation, the Death Drive still breaks the mold with a fairly chunky boost that is sure to work wonders with your best teetering tube amp.
Drive and Destruction work in pretty intuitively from there. The Death Drive's original analog drive circuit leans fairly fuzzy from the get-go. All this to say that the Death Drive can absolutely replicate your more tube-born saturations, though it also can play the starring role in your Muff-centric cover band, if you catch our drift. The Death Drive quickly mobilizes toward the kinds of thick, woolly, complex, and effervescent distortions we know blues rockers and shoegazers simply can't get enough of. It's a slippery slope from giving your old tube a loving push to getting lost in the proverbial tonal Twilight Zone, but isn't that why we're here?
Intensive Care Audio Death Drive Overdrive Final Thoughts
When it comes to "new" drive and distortion pedals, we understand the eyerolls that might be inspired when coverage of the latest new, exciting distortion drops. It does sometimes seem like distortion effects have been solved. How many more vintage amps can we really turn to before we run out of pages in the history book? How many more obscure, one-off fuzz circuits are there from that one time two guys were messing around with X diode instead of Y? Truly, fair enough.
Partly, it's because of these realities that something like the Intensive Care Audio Death Drive is so compelling. For something that really feels different and modern, Intensive Care Audio is certainly a name to turn to, and not only just when it comes to distortions. The Death Drive is a great example of something new in the realm of drive and distortion effects. For that, all we can offer more is a referral and a lollipop at the front desk – "Health is wealth," as they say.
