EP Review: Leng Tch’e – Hammered Into Collapse
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Ghent grinders, Leng Tch’e, reach their twenty-fifth anniversary with their first new material since the 2017 full-length, Razorgrind. Sadly not a new album, but anything that suggests this beast is stirring again is music to the ears.
Just two tracks and not even making it to a five-minute duration, Hammered Into Collapse doesn’t need to mess about and gets right into it with the titular song’s dirty riffs and ballistic percussion. Serge Kasongo continues to bark vitriol, and one cannot be fooled into thinking there isn’t the slightest bit of groove going on in the background. The breakdown comes with a sibilant hiss that might be from the very depths themselves, but the earworm outro is as enticing a passage as you’ll hear in the extreme this year.
Voided takes a similar approach in its formula: whiplash guitar, courtesy of Jan Hallaert and Olivier Coppen’s drum is predominantly snare and supports the whole structure on this one. This time the riffs are more staccato, Serge’s vocals more demonic and the groove more prominent. An unexpectedly ambient passage takes us into the closing bars, and it feels like it’s been a journey through many alien lands, even though it’s been less that five-minutes since you pressed play.
Brief and belligerently aggressive, Hammered Into Collapse is shorter than most songs, but lets us know that the grind scene is still in fine fettle, with this, added to work by Barren, Gadget and Cripple Bastards, and the impeding re-release of The Berzerker’s Reawakening album, 2026 continues to see a plethora of top-class extremity.
For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS’S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.
