Portland technical death grind wizards Vulnere are not short on musical ideas, as exemplified by their blistering new track, “Toothed Lines” from the upcoming EP of the same name. Introduced by a few measures of Mike Ashton’s ominous-sounding clean guitars, the cut gradually builds into a riff and blast beat frenzy (courtesy of dummer Cody Pulliam) narrated by the gravel-gargling/Tasmanian Devil vocals of Mark Smith. “Toothed Lines” bobs and weaves through a relentless battery of riffs ultimately culminating in Ashton’s weird atonal solo that sounds like it was dropped in from another track entirely. Completely brilliant.
The Toothed Lines EP features two other tracks and follows up the band’s 2020 full-length debut, Igneous. Drum tracking for the EP was handled by Charlie Koryn (Ascended Dead/Incantation) and vocal tracking was handled by Spencer Linn at Abyssal Lair. Guitar and bass were tracked at Beastman Audio by Leon Del Muerte, while mixing and mastering were tackled at Merrowsound by Keith Merrow. It’s set for release digitally in conjunction with Total Dissonance Worship on July 21. You can preorder it here.
Here’s what Mike Ashton had to say about the new track:
“This song was built on my desire to explore writing with ever shifting chord structures as my fingers spiderweb up and down the fretboard. This song has some of the most fun to play riffs of any of our songs and is a blast to play live. Will this be the last time we hear clean guitar on a Vulnere song? Who knows?”
