In this paper we design an acoustic metamaterial for broadband sound blockage that is easy to fabricate and presents tunable capabilities. Two adjacent holey plates are predicted to support a gap mode which is responsible of a forbidden band, displaying a negative effective bulk modulus. This acoustic metamaterial exhibits a weak dispersion with parallel momentum implying that strong attenuation appears for a broad range of angles of incident sound. Its bandwidth can be tailored at will by varying the separation between the two holey plates. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3491289]