The Swedish death metal favourite will make its long-awaited comeback in the near future.
If there’s any singular stompbox that we can thank for instigating the down-tuned phenomenon of Swedish death metal, it’s the humble HM-2 from Boss.
The Boss HM-2 is a rather simple affair: like most Boss stompboxes, it’s housed in a rather utilitarian, yet rugged, enclosure, with four simple controls letting you tap into a range of full-bore high gain sounds.
Released back in 1983 and derided by just about every user throughout that decade, the pedal really took off as a cult classic when it was heavily used across Entombed’s 1990 death opus Left Hand Path, and now, it’s near impossible to get your hands on an original unit. It’s also said to be a secret weapon of My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields, who often utilises the pedal to create his dense, reverberated shoegaze soundscapes.
Thankfully, the thoughtful team at Boss’s Waza Craft division have announced their intentions to give the esteemed pedal the reissue it’s always deserved, with a recent Talk With Boss live-stream seeing the company’s president Yoshi Ikegami drop the announcement unto the public.
What’s more, the company have even launched a dedicated Facebook group to let fans of the pedal assist in the design process of the Waza Craft reissue, with over 1,000 super-shredders already signing up to have their say.
With another product announcement slated for just over the horizon – and some very staunch speculation as to whether it’ll be a Waza Craft reissue of the acclaimed FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz – it looks like 2021 is going to be a big one for Boss.
Revisit our list of the ten greatest Boss pedals of all time.
