The Knife, Vulture, and Sacred Steel

The duo consists of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer and together in 2001 they released their first album. “The Knife” from their own label Rabid Records. Two years later they released their sophomore album entitled “Deep Cuts.” Following this release The Knife gained more attention when fellow Swedish artist, Jose Gonzalez, did an acoustic cover of the song “Heartbeats” that was used for a Sony advertisement. That same year the duo was nominated for, and won, the Swedish Grammi for Pop Group Of The Year, and also received a nomination in the Best Record of the Year category. However, in an act of protest against the male dominance in the music industry, they boycotted the ceremony by instead sending two Guerilla girls with the number 50 written on their costumes.

The Knife immediately set to work on their next album and on 8 February 2005, the group performed live for the first time ever, playing alongside a screening of movie maker Andreas Nilsson’s feature film “When I Found The Knife.” The performance at the Institue of Contemporary Arts in London, UK was a huge success. In 2006 they set out for their first tour in tandem with their third album (“Silent Shout”) release. The tour was a huge global success and in November 2006, a DVD was released of the tour entitled “Silent Shout: An Audio Visual Experience.”

Despite the duo’s great success, both Olof and Karin took on solo projects, with Olof taking on the stage names DJ Coolof and Oni Ayhun and Karin announcing a solo album called “Fever Ray” in early 2009. In late 2009 The Knife announced that they were working on a commissioned piece for a Danish Opera entitled “Tomorrow, In A Year,” a Charles Darwin inspired story by the Hotel Pro Forma performance group.

Aside from the studio release of “Tomorrow, In A Year”, the duo didn’t make much new material; however, they found continued success due to their songs being featured on a number of television shows (like CSI and One Tree Hill), advertisements and films (such as “Les Amours Imaginaires.”) But in 2012 their fans got the happy announcement that The Knife was working on new material and would be releasing their fourth album “Shaking The Habitual,” which was released in early 2013. The release of the album also meant a new tour throughout Europe.

In continuance with the “Shaking The Habitual” tour, the band also played the Coachella Music Festival, as well as other venues throughout the United States. The new tour was too good to be true for fans however, because with the tour dates released the band also issued a statement of their disbandment once their “Shaking The Habitual” tour had come to a close on 8 November 2014.