Album Review: The Knife - Shaking The Habitual

Shaking The Habitual is a furious record. It's a seething, frothing piece of art so violent that occasionally it chokes itself. It's only on repeated listens with an open mind that you can accept its sinister aesthetic and find something warm at the core of all the icy terror.

Shaking… is a long, complicated and uncompromising work that exists as a visceral emotional expression as well as a calculated exercise in noise art. It begins with the jungle rhythms of recent single A Tooth For An Eye, one of the few songs on the record that offers a beat to hold on to as it throws you around. Karin Dreijer Andersson, whose alien voice usually feeds through so many filters and effects that it comes out sounding possessed, is actually brought to the point of distortion as she pushes it hard. It's an oddly humanising effect that draws you closer to whatever pain she's experiencing.

Full Of Fire is a bubbling, melting techno mess that drags you over hot stones. Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realised is a vast plateau of nightmarish sound that feels like an attempt to realign your sanity to fit their language. A Cherry On Top is the ambient soundtrack to some lost Lynch film about a ghost town haunted by HR Giger's biomechanical creations.

This sounds intimidating (and it is), but there's a strong beating heart that pumps this strange blood and, while the record constantly circles around a central feeling of otherness it remains a fascinating, satisfying and organic experience. And make no mistake, this is an experience, and should be approached as a fully committed act, not something passive.