The key to Anders tone is simple.
The Demonizer has little to do with it as he hardly uses it now - I think he said it broke.
Hotrod/Matamp/Marshall/Orange/Mesa all have a character, but its how you set it up that matters. Are you using EMG pickups, thats a must for the chuggy.
Katatonia dont use Matamp as such on the albums they use a mesa for the chuggy stuff. But I have an Orange and with the Demonizer and the orange I can get close, the trick is to get used to the EQ on the amp. Try not to push, pull back first then push gentle and learn how the amp breaks up and at what point it becomes messy.
I do have the demonizer but I can tell you if you are looking for the album tones you don't need to look at the pedal - even though its a good pedal
You need to consider the setup of your amp and you need to understand distortion. If you are the type of guy who puts the gain at 100% this will be your first mistake. Anders talks about how they no longer push the distortion up high (listen to Discouraged ones and you can hear the distortion up high, it pushes the guitars back in the mix).
I would suggest learning how the bass nob interacts with the distortion for chuggy stuff, you should remove a lot of bass as that gets farty and mushy. A proper valve amp helps a lot. A guitar loaded with EMG pickups will get you right there. Pull back on the bass as you crank up the gain.
For Lead tones, he uses a fernandes sustainer on a lot of TGCD and various duncan pickups on the other albums. On NITND there is a lot of analog pedal stuff happening. The GT-3 has something called a feedbacker effect, that can do a lot of the nice long evolving tones.
The way he plays has a large effect on the sound.
On the albums he blends many sounds together, there are 4 rhythm tracks (with the less distortion I talked about) but these have to be played well otherwise they sound a mess. DOnt bother doing more than 4 as again it gets messy, and learn how mixing the 2 x 2 together. Learn how sounds interact.
It depends what you are going for if you are after the quality of a good mix you need to understand these ideas, if you are looking for live, get a guitar with EMGs, crack the amp up in volume and control the bass levels and buy a GT-3 or some decent analog delays. I have to say though ive never been one impressed with Katatonias live sound.
If you want more I suggest giving your life away to the devil and heading here:
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy-sneap-151/
