All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Drowned In Sound

This is one of the most rich and accomplished albums of recent times. Essential.

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100

Stylus Magazine

While their sound has become immensely creepier, it has also improbably become more beautiful.

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MSN Consumer Guide (Robert Christgau)

The musical construction is so jaunty that they can't be serious even if they're cutting their alienated fans out of the joke. [Feb/Mar 2007]

Spin

A freaky, moving masterpiece. [Aug 2006, p.80]

Delusions of Adequacy

While many electronic acts are trying their hand at folkier compositions and attempting to squeeze warmth from the digital realm, The Knife's Silent Shout opts for ice-cold distance. The record suffers nothing for it, instead coming out monolithic and beautiful.

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Pitchfork

As menacing as it is hooky, this is some bracing stuff.

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cokemachineglow

On Silent Shout, The Knife have shaken off their more tangential musical inclinations and produced an intensely cohesive album, a monochrome rainbow that has emerged from the unfocused torrential rainstorm of before.

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All Music Guide

A much darker, more ambitious set of songs than the Knife's previous work.

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PopMatters

There hasn’t been such an overtly bleak and dangerous concept album like Silent Shout in quite a long time.

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Uncut

The sound of a group entering their prime, Silent Shout--strange, bold and tuneful--is textbook Euro-pop. [Apr 2006, p.110]

The Guardian

It's anybody's guess what a fan of the Gonzalez and Royksopp tracks will make of this beautiful, haunted record, but its dark ingenuity is the kind that keeps electronic music alive.

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Under The Radar

Scaring the abject shit out of you doesn’t make it a bad record. It makes it the most arresting electronica album of 2006. [Summer 2006]

NOW Magazine

Once you wrap your head around The Knife's strange little world, it's actually a pretty interesting place.

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Drawer B

And while lyrically nothing comes close to eclipsing the pop genius of "Heartbeats" from their previous release, Deep Cuts, several tracks on Silent Shout demonstrate considerable growth both lyrically and musically, making this a solid follow up from a band that has further evolved their own curious brand of synthpop.

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Billboard

"Silent Shout" excels with pulsating electro-rhythms, even though they don't include drums, bass or even a drum and bass sound.

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Almost Cool

When they keep things a little more subtle, Silent Shout is outstanding, but in other places it's just sorta there.

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Austin Chronicle

Merging Siouxsie Sioux with Aphex Twin, Silent Shout twists manipulated sounds around a basic core of addictive rhythm in a convoluted game of tetherball.

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Prefix Magazine

Far too often [Karin's] voice is put through a vocoder, multi-tracked, and treated by various other electronic procedures. The result is that one of the group's main talents is stifled and limited.

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musicOMH.com

If you're looking to buy this record on the back of Heartbeats you may be disappointed as it bears little resemblance to the Knife's current work.

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Dusted Magazine

The key is minor, the tone is melancholy, the concerns are callow, but the leitmotif is redeeming.

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Magnet

Interesting sounds? To be sure. Impenetrable songs? That, too. [#73, p.94]

Q Magazine

A hideous mess of electro noodling and maddeningly obtuse, tuneless vocals. [May 2006, p.126]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 61 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

G C. gave it an8:
I listened to this CD for the first time today, and... wow! If I'd have known from day one how awesome this album is, I'd have bought it earlier. Sonic cathedrals, indeed. Also: please don't diss Q too much. I used to read it, and while I now see how crappy it is, it did help me in developing my musical taste. I read The Word now.

Harry G. gave it a10:
A different sound than Deep Cuts, more darker and manic.

Gerbil D. gave it a10:
Stunning album. Pulsing shimmering beats evoke a glassy Nordic world of shadowy forests and icy sea-scapes; sophisticated, at times heartrendingly beautiful (From Off To On) and at all times breathtaking.

Matt G gave it a10:
Easily the best album of 2006 in my opinion. The lyrics are powerful and enlightening, and i completely disagree with prefix magazine. The vocals are stripped of anything accessibly human, leaving nothing but emotion. I think it really shows how good of a singer she is to retain so much meaning in her words after all of the effects thrown onto her performance. There is much to experience with Silent Shout.

dan a. gave it an8:
Q out of touch recently? They've always been out of touch! They awarded Ladies and Gentlemen We're Floating in Space and The Soft Bulletin 2 stars! And a Semisonic album stars.

c. gave it a9:
i love the record, but it surprises me who else does. whenever i play it around those who have never heard it they always ask who it is and nod...

Spookrijder gave it a1:
This is a mystery to me. I mean, through all those years of listening to music, from pop ditties to improvised music, from jazz to hardcore, from electronic dance stuff to electronic abstract and/or noisy things, I can call myself without being pretentious as an openminded person when it concerns music at least, but this album... I just don't dig it. No matter how much I've tried, till today. Pitchfork Media put it as album of the year 2006, so let's try. I tend to trust them most of the time even if they tend to hype some bands or artists. I mean, the first Bloc Party's album is good, some tracks like the single "Banquet" is even extremely brilliant, but the album as a whole is, well, unbalanced in quality. The same for Franz Ferdinand. Anyway, back to The Knife. I didn't hear anything which could sound anything like brilliant there, the synths are totally old fashioned in the worst way, the melodies are simply so pedestrian a song like "Marble House" could gain some points at the Eurovision song contest, this is why I gave 1 as rating. They has been compared to Dead Can Dance... while I've never been a fan of that band, where is there any comparison? Lisa Gerrard's voice and investment in their songs is without questioning, but this girl Karin Dreijer Andersson don't even reach Agnetha or Frida from Abba while they are already less than average singers, but at least they brought some guts in their songs. Well, if somebody could explain me what I'm missing with The Knife, that somebody is welcome. I don't want to die stupid.

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