Shaking The Habitual

Pitchfork 8.4/10 Shaking the Habitual is, inarguably, an achievement. It is the Knife's most political, ambitious, accomplished album, but in a strange way it also feels like its most personal

A.V. Club A- Shaking The Habitual has minor drawbacks—it wastes too much time on shambling instrumentals, and a wall-to-wall rager would have been great—but this brother-sister team is still heroically alienating and giddily perverse.

The Needle Drop 9/10 On the Knife's latest full-length, the Swedish electronic music duo goes absolutely insane with a 98 minute album that features a ton of long, linear art pop tracks that overload the senses and challenge expectations.

The Line of Best Fit 7/10 It’s an admirable pool of ideas, thrilling noises, rare, unpredictable melodies and a huge amount of imagination but to be brutally frank, it doesn’t encourage repeat listens.

NME 3.5/5 'Shaking The Habitual' is a radical gesture from an enigmatic group. As such, it will not be for everyone. Newcomers will likely be baffled. Hardcore Knife fans will hail it a masterpiece, while privately making fairly regular use of the skip button.

Evening Standard 2/5 Shaking the Habitual is an album which, for all its cluttered clatter, lacks heart as well as focus.

Rolling Stone 3.5/5 They've released a 94-minute follow-up that explores even wilder styles of mordantly nutso android bleat.

DIY 4/5 Both heavy and cumbersome and light and uncertain, it will prove difficult for some to find an entrance to it, but once you’re inside you’ll find yourself enveloped by its bold experimentation and the stunning way they execute it. Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer still sound like no one else around.

The Independent 4/5 It's long (nearly 100 minutes), strange, disturbing, uncomfortable, challenging. But it never fails to fascinate.

All Music 4/5 Rawer yet more sophisticated than any of their previous music, it sounds like a skin being shed, and it's a testament to the Knife's skill that they make such formidable sounds so compelling for so long.

The Skinny 4/5 A disquieting and structureless piece of work that speaks of an endemic dissatisfaction with most of the systems in which we both live and make art

Under The Radar 8.5/10 The majority of Shaking the Habitual's running time is interwoven with industrial streaks, otherworldly tones, and haunting tonal experiments. This is not totally unexpected.

Clash 8/10 Self-possessed and uncompromising, this is a record with regal bearing.

The Observer 4/5 At its most compelling, Shaking the Habitual is racked with lust, anger and urgent, quaking rhythms.

Loud and Quiet 9/10 It’s a delicious feeling to listen to an album so pointedly on edge, holding your breath, occasionally checking over your shoulder, sat frozen and tracking the shadows…wondering, hoping that all the doors are locked. Their darkest masterpiece.

Slant 3.5/5 Shaking the Habitual isn't so much "Shake Your Love" as it is Shakespeare...translated into alien biometric rhythms tapping out iambic pentameter.

Pop Matters 9/10 Shaking the Habitual is, to paraphrase the Knife’s lyrics, hard to solve, but, then again, so are the issues the Dreijers are tackling on it.

The Guardian 3/5 Shaking the Habitual's problem is that the Knife seem to have dismissed the idea of making your point concisely as merely another affectation of a decadent and corrupt society.

Spectrum Culture 65% Shaking the Habitual will draw a line in the sand for the Knife’s fan base.

Beats Per Minute 90% Shaking the Habitual may be their most daunting and most cleverly incisive record to date.

The Telegraph 4/5 It’s an adventure.

The Irish Times 3/5 Full of Fire stomps and writhes with Berghain-like intensity, the 19-minute long Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized is a feverish drone, and Without You, My Life Will Be Boring has echoes of Silent Shout 's more accessible dimensions. This time out, though, The Knife are unapologetically playing for themselves.

Uncut 9/10 This duo's songs are genetic pop mutations, scampering out of control.

Hot Press 8.0/10 This leftfield record will be too visceral and impenetrable for some. Their loss. Would that more artists cut as deeply as The Knife.