Silver Knife – Silver Knife (Review)

Silver Knife are an international post-black metal band and this is their second album.

Silver Knife is the 47-minute successor to 2020’s well-received Unyielding/Unseeing. Containing the extremely busy and talented Déhà, as well as current/ex-members of Burial Remains, Laster, Monads, Paramnesia, and Vuur & Zijde, Silver Knife is an album with a lot of experience poured into it, and it shows.

Silver Knife combines atmospheric black metal with aspects of post-black metal and blackgaze. This is expressed in the form of harsh blackened violence that’s laced with despondent darkness and mood-rich melancholic depth. It’s the sort of album that blurs its influences well, resulting in songs that could fit into most of these categories in one form or another. I think the key words for this release are a mix of atmosphere, emotion, and aggression.

The music is atmospheric, first and foremost, building immersive soundscapes for the listener to dive headfirst into. Even the aggression ultimately services this evocative emotional outpouring, providing an absorbing blackened tapestry to explore.

The songwriting conceals more hooks than you might be expecting. Certainly not of the blatant, catchy variety, but through repeated listens the blackened guitars and the feelings they carry worm their way into your skull and sit there, tantalising. Some of the songwriting is longer in duration too, with the 13-minute closing track Triumph in Tragedy being the obvious outlier. As a whole though, Silver Knife is best consumed as one single work, as the songs all seem to run into each other as they bring forth their torrents of pain and despair in black metal form.

As an avowed fan of atmospheric black metal, this hits the spot for me. Silver Knife have produced an album that’s easy to enjoy. Whether you favour the Cascadian style, or something more post-or blackgaze, there’s something here for you. Make sure you check this out.