Sonicstate Unleashes the Erica Synths Razornator: Five Blades of Delay Carnage

Erica Synths and 112dB have cooked up the Razornator, a hardware effects unit built around five stereo, chromatically tuned, resonating delay lines. Forget safe and subtle—this thing transforms unpitched drum hits or bland loops into monstrous harmonic textures. Matt from Sonicstate doesn’t waste time: he chucks drums straight in, dials the dry/wet up, and suddenly the room is swimming in pitch-shifted resonance. If you’re after a polite reverb, look elsewhere—this is for people who want to turn a hi-hat into a church bell, or a snare into a sci-fi choir.

What’s wild is how the Razornator takes basic, unpitched material and makes it sing. Those five delay lines can each be tuned, making your percussion sound like it’s got a conservatory degree. Matt’s glee is obvious—he’s been waiting for a hardware unit to do what only plugins could before. You don’t just process your sounds; you transmogrify them, rave bunker–style. Watch the video for the full onslaught—words can’t do the harmonic carnage justice.

The Razornator’s signal path is as hands-on as it is chaotic. You get a resonant filter up front—officially a low-pass, though Matt swears it acts more like a band-pass—so you can home in on the frequencies you want to mangle. This is essential: five tuned delay lines across the full spectrum would turn your mix into soup. With the filter, you sculpt the chaos, isolating hi-hats or kicks before the harmonic storm hits.

Damping and decay controls add another layer of tweakability, letting you stretch sounds into infinity or slice them short. The real curveball is the envelope follower, which Matt demonstrates with his trademark mischief. It’s an attenuverter, so you can flip how your input shapes the resonance. Crank it for tight, percussive hits or back it off for endless washes. The interplay between decay, damping and envelope modulation is a sweet spot hunt—one best explored by ear. If you want every parameter explained, pause the video and bring a thermos.

Here’s where the Razornator earns its stripes as a proper performance weapon. A central dial sets the root note, while each of the five delay lines can be tuned independently—by hand or via MIDI. There’s a pitch shift that can move everything up or down two octaves, so you’re not limited to polite harmonies. Want to turn your drum break into a chord stack? Go for it. Matt shows off MIDI control, sequencing the pitches and triggering chords in real-time, with the delay lines tracking each note. You could easily build evolving pads or twisting melodic patterns from even the most boring input.

The implementation is deep but doesn’t get in your way: quantisation keeps things musical, while MIDI CC opens the door for external control freaks. Chord mode lets you play across the five voices, distributing notes as they come in. You can even sequence the pitch shifts—perfect for those who like their textures restless and unpredictable. If you want to see pitch automation in action, just watch Matt’s face light up as he pushes the Razornator into new territory.

Sonicstate’s Matt doesn’t just stick to drum loops—he hurls synths, arpeggios and even vocals through the Razornator, proving it’s not a one-trick pony. Drums are instantly transformed, with dry hats and snares blooming into metallic chords or eerie pads. The compressor at the end of the chain keeps things from spiralling into clipping hell, so you can crank the resonance without fear. Presets like Chordizer and Subtech show off the box’s range, from tense cinematic textures to throbbing bass drones.

Switching to synths, the Razornator keeps up—adding shimmering harmonics and discordant overtones that’ll have sound designers drooling. When vocals hit the input, things get straight-up surreal: harmonised choirs, phasey stabs, and instant ambience. The big knobs and playable interface make it a live-performance dream. Don’t expect a clean, surgical effect—this box is about attitude and sonic risk. If you want to truly understand the madness, you’ve got to see (and hear) the video. Some sounds just can’t be explained—they have to be survived.