Frost Giant Electronics' Athos V2 Sacred Sustaining Device is a potent Doom Sludge Distortion

The Athos is the 3rd Frost Giant I’ve acquired - and kind of completes my Trifecta for that brand alongside my V2 Soma, and Snowblind Edition of Architect of Reality - the last of which is still my favourite of the group. I hope Eric may shrink his Mountain and Surya pedals to compact editions at some stage - and then I will consider those too. While for now I am satisfied that I have much the best of what Eric currently offers.

I’m a huge fan of sludgy doomy fuzzes and distortions - of the kind that Brooks Blackhawk particularly excels at. So I thought that I had to own the Frost Giant Athos take on that genre too - which is potent for sure - while not quite as deeply visceral as some of those Blackhawk varieties.

Controls - Boost, Presence, Saturation, Volume, Tone, Gain.

For me this rather acquits itself slightly more as a more conventional but highly textured high gain distortion - it certainly has a flavour of sludge - but not quite that fully deep and doomy lava / treacle style that some of the most extreme versions of this kind exhibit.

For me I think the Blackhawk Balrog in particular is still the champion of this type - where the Athos doesn’t really deliver that extreme version of doom sludge - even with most of the dials maxed out.

I tend to play the Athos with the Boost @12 o’c, Presence at 3 o’c, Saturation @ Max, Volume @ Max, Tone @ 10 o’c, and Gain @12 o’c. At those settings you get as sludgy a texture as can be extracted from this pedal. If you turn the Boost and Gain up much further - the added compression kind of mutes out and somewhat tightens up the frequency response - meaning you get fewer harmonics and artefacts beyond the sort of noon sweet-spot.

The sludge component is sightly more midsy here - and is missing those deep down doomy drone frequencies you get with something like a Balrog. So as I mentioned - it is a really potent high gain pedal - but doesn’t quite touch the extremes of sludge that the best of the genre manage to capture.

I’m still happy to own the Athos - it’s a really versatile High Gain Distortion - and fittingly balances out my Frost Giant Trifecta. As mentioned in the intro - the Architect of Reality is the MVP in that group. I really like both the Soma V2 and Athos V2 - but they don’t quite go to 11 - which the the AOR most definitely does!

The Athos V2 is available right now from the Frost Giant Webstore - for $199, while I acquired mine from Andertons for £229 - yay the pound exchange rate!

I would be interested to hear from others who own the Athos - and whether they’ve had the privilege of comparing that to some of Brook Blackhawk’s output.

I think the Athos is a great Distortion - while I have a few Blackhawk Pedals that I probably prefer for similar applications.

What say all of you?