Swedish Death Metal guitar sound explained – Ola England and a Boss HM-2
Swedish Death Metal in a box
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Ola Englund explains the Boss HM-2 and Swedish Death Metals · Source: YouTube/Ola Englund
Ola Englund has taken time to show the world via his YouTube channel the distinct voice of Swedish Death Metal. The ubiquitous Boss HM-2 pedal, that ’80s black and orange distortion pedal the rest of the world forgot, but Sweden embraced.
Boss HM-2
It is true, that back in the 1980s the Boss HM-2 was everywhere you looked and we all laughed at it for being shit. But in one strange part of Europe it stirred something in their souls and Swedish Death Metal was born! I had so many of these pedals, as you could pick them up used for about £10-20 at car boot sales and junk shops, as everyone bought one, figured it sounded awful and sold them on for a loss. Nowadays they sell for inflated prices and especially if you have an original Japanese made unit, rather than the later Taiwanese variant.
Gothenburg vs Stockholm
Who better to explain the origins of this guitar movement than a Swede? Ola Englund is a guitarist with The Haunted and has also played with Six Feet Under. He responds to bands like In Flames, Soilwork, Dark Tranquility, but also to their local “adversaries” Nihilist, Dismember or Entombed. All Swedish, but still different as they came from different ends of the country.
The common ground of all these bands? Of course with the well-known boss HM-2 aka. Heavy Metal in a box, So for a brief, but detailed explanation of the history of this musical genre and how best to dial in your HM-2 for those classic Death Metal tones you should check out Ola’s video below.
Video
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One response to “Swedish Death Metal guitar sound explained – Ola England and a Boss HM-2”
The HM-2 may have been “kicked to the side of the road” there in “the old country” but I sold a ton of those here in the States in the 80’s and they were quite popular over here.