No one expected The Knife to return with anything predictable, but man, I don't think anyone thought they'd came back with something as coarse as this. After the stunning leaps that took them from the digital pop of their early records to the electronic shadows of Silent Shout, or the disquieting solo record Fever Ray to the operatic ambience of the collaborative Tomorrow, in a Year project, it may have been safe to assume that The Knife were at least moving towards a more ethereal destination.
Instead, we have Full of Fire, the first single from their upcoming double album Shaking the Habitual. The song is hard, it's brutal and it's techno. Against a background of insistent drum snares punctuated with squealing, squelching effects and Karin Dreijer Andersson's dexterous vocals, the nearly ten minute track states its purpose bluntly: In 2013, The Knife are getting rough. And if the song itself isn't enough to suggest this, take a look at the disorienting video, or indeed the deleterious cover art:
Towards the end of the song, a lyrical refrain suggests the reasoning behind these confronting choices- 'When you're full of fire, what's the object of your desire?' A rhetorical appeal from restless souls. And when artists as restless as The Knife go seek inspiration through new impulses and new extremes, the journey might not be pleasant but damned if it's not exhilarating.
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