Black Metal Guitar Tone: Settings, Pedals and Plugin Chains
Black Metal Guitar Tone: Settings, Pedals and Plugin Chains
A black metal guitar tone is thin, icy and treble-forward, with a wall of fast tremolo picking on top and a fairly low bass setting underneath. You get there with high gain, bass kept low, treble pushed high, and a pick attack close to the bridge. Then you fix what the raw sound does to your mix. This guide gives you starting settings, the pedal and amp choices behind them, the tuning question, and a plugin workflow you can run at home.
TL;DR
- Start with bass low, mids scooped or moderate, treble high, gain high. Then pull the treble back until it stops hurting.
- The sound lives in your right hand: fast tremolo picking near the bridge matters as much as any pedal.
- Most classic records are in standard tuning or a step down, so you do not need to drop-tune to sound the part.
- Record a dry DI next to your processed tone so you can swap the chain later.
- A “mix-ready” black metal tone keeps some low end and mids. Raw settings alone usually vanish under the drums and bass.
Table of Contents
- What a black metal guitar tone actually is
- EQ and amp settings to start from
- Pedals: where the classic buzz comes from
- Tuning: do you need to drop?
- Technique: your right hand does half the work
- Making the tone sit in a mix
- Our perspective
- Plugin chains for black metal at home
- A quick troubleshooting guide
- FAQ
- Sources
What a black metal guitar tone actually is
The genre’s guitar sound is brittle, icy and treble-forward, and it is built on rapid tremolo picking, according to this breakdown of Mayhem’s gear and technique. The same page notes that much of the early sound came from cheap distortion pedals and cheap recording equipment. That context matters: the “lo-fi” quality was partly circumstance, and today you can choose how much of it to keep.
That is also why there is no single correct tone. Ivar Bjørnson of Enslaved argues in The Guardian that the genre’s spirit is about rejecting convention and pushing boundaries, not arguing over what counts as “true”. Treat the settings below as a starting point, then bend them toward your own songs.
Three broad flavors cover most of what people mean:
| Flavor | Character | Typical approach |
|---|---|---|
| Raw / old school | Thin, fizzy, harsh, low fidelity | Distortion pedal into a clean or mildly driven amp, bass near zero |
| Atmospheric | Washed, wide, sustained, often with reverb | Moderate gain, stacked and panned layers, longer tails |
| Modern / polished | Dense, defined, still bright | Tight high-gain amp, EQ filters, double-tracked rhythm guitars |
EQ and amp settings to start from
Forum advice for this style is remarkably consistent. One long-running guitar forum thread is not something we rely on here, so we lean on the page we actually read: the Mayhem-focused guide suggests volume around 8 and treble at 10 as a starting point for the amp. That is a cartoonishly extreme setting, and it is meant as a starting point, not a destination.
A more practical recipe for a real recording:
- Gain: high, but not maxed. Past a certain point more gain just removes pick definition and turns tremolo runs into mush.
- Bass: low. Around 1 to 3 on a 0 to 10 scale, enough to keep the amp from sounding hollow.
- Mids: this is where you decide your flavor. Scooped is the stereotype, but a little midrange (4 to 5) keeps the riff readable.
- Treble: 7 to 10 on the amp, then judge it in the mix, not alone.
- Presence: moderate. Too much stacks with treble and gets painful on cymbal-heavy mixes.
Play a tremolo-picked riff, then a single power chord, then a palm-muted figure. If the tremolo riff sounds good but the chord sounds like static, back off the gain a notch.
Pedals: where the classic buzz comes from
The Mayhem guide lists settings for a Boss HM-2 style distortion: level at maximum, the two EQ bands boosted high, and distortion up full. It also says you can dial the distortion back if you like. The HM-2’s character is a hard midrange-forward buzz with sharp edges, which is why it keeps coming up in this genre.
Whatever pedal you use, these principles hold:
- Use it into a clean-ish amp for the raw sound. Pedal distortion into an already high-gain amp gets muddy quickly.
- Boost the highs before the distortion, not after, if you want the harshness to feel integrated rather than painted on.
- Place a high-pass filter in the signal path. Cutting the lowest frequencies tightens everything.
If you do not own a pedal board, an amp plugin with built-in pedal models gives you the same chain without the cables and without the noise floor.
Tuning: do you need to drop?
People assume black metal means low tuning. It usually does not. A thread on the Metal Archives forum about Mayhem’s early records has users agreeing the band was mostly in standard E, with some material possibly a step down in D. Forum posts are not gospel, but they match the genre’s reputation for standard or near-standard tunings.
Dropping lower can darken the tone, but it is not a shortcut to heaviness. Deafheaven’s Kerry McCoy has said that dynamics, tone and syncopation matter more than low tunings or distortion pedals. That applies to black metal too: the cold feeling comes from brightness and speed, not from how low the strings sit.
If you want to experiment with a lower tuning without retuning your guitar, a polyphonic pitch shifter that works on chords is the tool. We cover our own below.
Technique: your right hand does half the work
No plugin fixes a weak picking hand. A few habits make the biggest difference:
- Tremolo pick on single strings. Aim for even, fast alternate picking, with the wrist loose.
- Pick near the bridge. The guitar’s tone gets brighter close to the bridge and darker toward the neck, as the same Mayhem guide explains.
- Use open and tritone-based intervals. Flattened fifths and open strings ring out and create the dissonant, unsettled feel.
- Mute the strings you are not playing. At high gain every stray string shows up.
Record a riff at three picking positions and compare. It is a one-minute test that teaches more than an hour of EQ tweaking.
Making the tone sit in a mix
A tone that sounds great solo often disappears in a full mix. The settings that sound most “black metal” on their own are the ones with almost no low end, and the bass guitar and kick fill that space anyway. The conflict is in the upper midrange, where vocals, snare and cymbals all live.
Some practical fixes:
- Double-track the rhythm guitar and pan the takes hard left and right. Play both takes, do not copy and paste.
- High-pass around the low end of the guitar range, and low-pass the fizz at the top so the cymbals have room.
- Cut one narrow harsh band with a sweep. Boost a narrow EQ band, find the frequency that hurts, then cut it by a few decibels.
- Keep the gain lower on the double-tracks than your instinct says. Less gain makes a bigger, clearer sound.
A useful safety net: record a dry DI alongside your processed tone. As a Sleep Token and Tesseract engineer puts it in Guitar World, this lets you re-amp or change your tone later if the first choice does not fit the mix. It costs nothing and has saved many sessions.
Our perspective
We build guitar plugins for metal and lo-fi indie, and black metal sits right between those two worlds. The genre asks for aggressive, bright distortion and, often, a deliberately degraded, atmospheric texture. Most people trying to get this sound at home are stuck on one of two problems: the tone is too clean and polite, or it is harsh and thin and falls apart once drums are added.
Our view is that you should build the tone in stages and judge each stage in context. Start with the amp and cabinet. Add pedal gain only if the amp alone does not give you the edge. Then add texture, such as tape character, only at the end, because texture is easy to overdo.
We also think tuning is a creative choice, not a requirement. Real-time polyphonic detune is useful because it lets you audition a lower tuning on chords before you commit to restringing a guitar or recording in a different tuning. That experimentation is cheap, and it is the kind of thing that used to need a studio.
Finally, treat “true” tone arguments with suspicion. The best black metal guitar sound is the one that makes your riffs feel cold, desperate or vast, and the plugin or pedal is secondary to the writing.
— Louis
Plugin chains for black metal at home
The question of the best amp sim for black metal usually comes down to three things: does it give you a tight high-gain voice, can you add pedal-style drive in front of it, and can you shape the tone without buying five extra plugins.
Here is a chain that works in any DAW:
- Record a DI on one track and keep it untouched.
- Amp plugin on a second track, with bass low, treble up, and gain high.
- Drive pedal model in front, with the amp gain turned down a little to compensate.
- High-pass and low-pass filters after the amp to carve out space.
- Reverb or tape texture at the end, if the song needs atmosphere.
- Double-track and pan the result.
For black metal specifically, we would start with Requiem, our metal guitar amp VST3 with detune. It gives you a high-gain amp voice and real-time polyphonic detune in one plugin, so you can try lower tunings on chords without touching your guitar’s strings. If your songs lean toward twin-guitar melodies, Septem adds a harmonizer for dual-guitar lines. For the washed, cassette-like end of atmospheric black metal, Somnia brings a lo-fi tape effect.
Our plugins run on Windows as VST3 and standalone apps, so you can test the tone before you open a project. Requiem is €59 as a one-off purchase, or from €5.99 per month, and you can see every plugin and plan on the pricing page.
A quick troubleshooting guide
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Sounds like static, riffs unclear | Too much gain | Drop gain a notch, check pick attack |
| Thin and weak against drums | No low-mid body | Raise mids slightly, add a gentle bass bump |
| Harsh, ear-piercing treble | Treble and presence stacking | Lower presence, sweep for the harsh band and cut |
| Tremolo runs blur together | Reverb too long, gain too high | Shorten reverb, tighten gain |
| Double-tracks sound the same | Copied take | Record a second performance |
FAQ
How do I get a black metal guitar tone?
Use high gain, low bass, high treble, and a bright pick attack near the bridge. Add a distortion pedal or pedal model in front of the amp for extra edge, then play fast tremolo-picked riffs. Finally, check the tone in the full mix and pull back the harshest frequencies.
What tuning is used in black metal?
Much of the classic material is in standard E tuning, with some songs a step down, as users on the Metal Archives forum discuss for Mayhem’s early records. Lower tunings are used by some bands, but they are not required for the style. If you want to test a lower tuning, a polyphonic detune plugin lets you do it without retuning.
What does black metal sound like?
It sounds bright, cold and abrasive, with rapid tremolo-picked guitar, blast-beat drums and often shrieked vocals. The production can be raw and lo-fi or atmospheric and wide. Davghter describes it as an emotive genre that is less about technical skill.
Do I need an amp, or can a plugin do it?
A plugin can do it. Record a dry DI alongside your processed tone, and you can change amps, pedals and settings later without re-recording. That flexibility is the main advantage of a plugin chain in a home studio.
Sources
- Mayhem Amp Settings & Gear: Black Metal Guitar Tone
- Black metal, mayhem, tuning? Encyclopaedia Metallum forum
- Deafheaven’s Kerry McCoy: Grasping at Hooks, Premier Guitar
- How to improve your guitar recordings, Guitar World
- How Norwegian black metal grew up, The Guardian
- Davghter in conversation, Beast Music