It's Cyber Monday, and those of us with music to make and cash to burn have likely indulged in a weekend-long splurge of frenzied bargain-hunting, our most materialistic impulses only momentarily satiated before the festive period triggers another GAS relapse.
If you're exercising restraint this year, however, there's still fun to be had. Keen to draw attention to their Black Friday plugin deals, developers are releasing some excellent free plugins to lure in potential buyers. We've already brought you news of Minimal Audio's OTT compression plugin Squash - and have also been eyeing up Dawesome's intriguing Zyklop synth - but today we spotted something that absolutely had to be covered: Newfangled Audio's Obliterate.
Obliterate is an idiosyncratic distortion plugin built around dual filters, with a fascinating backstory. Newfangled Audio's Dan Gillespie was designing a filter when a bug in the code caused some unwanted, but unique-sounding, resonant distortion. For many of us, this would present a problem, but for Gillespie, it presented an opportunity: he's now captured the "absurd, over-the-top" distortion he stumbled on accidentally and packaged it in a free plugin.
As its name would suggest, Obliterate is bent on destruction, producing a fierce and violent form of distortion that is anything but subtle. It will confidently pulverize any signal, turning synths into sludge and drum machines into digital detritus. Above the central slider for adjusting its obliteration levels, you're given the choice between setting it to ON or MORE ON - this should tell you everything you need to know.
Obliterate is equipped with two multimode filters, visualized in its central display - here you can drag the skull icon to control the resonance and frequency of its unique brand of filter-based distortion. Filter shapes can be morphed between using the two X/Y pads below, giving you the option of low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, all-pass and notch filters. If Obliterate's obliteration gets a little out of hand (and we've no doubt that it will) you're able to dial the effect back using a mix control - but where's the fun in that?
Obliterate will run on macOS and Windows and is available in AAX/AU/VST/VST3 formats. Visit Newfangled Audio's website to download Obliterate and check out its Black Friday deals.
