Mute

On the aptly titled concept album Shaking The Habitual, Swedish brother-and-sister duo The Knife continue to sonically challenge the conventions of the electronic genre with a political and highly cerebral follow up to 2006’s smash Silent Shout. Abandoning their signature whimsical take on avant-garde electro, The Knife offer a dozen hard-to-digest esoteric songs on Shaking The Habitual, most of which are a far cry from the idiosyncratic club favorites that made their previous effort a hit. While the duo’s unwavering devotion to the feminist-friendly ethos that inform the record is an admirable feat, the resulting tracks are austere, dissonant and distant. Although the feverish 10-minute-long single “Full Of Fire” commences with promising banger-ready beats – much like the entirety of the album – the enduring track eventually devolves into a mélange of grating industrial-inspired beats, shrieking vocals and self-indulgent ambient interludes that alienate the listener in a shroud of concept-heavy noise.