ALBUM REVIEW: Radiant Knife - "Radiant Knife"

By: Ben Fitts

Album Type:  Full Length

Date Released: 13/01/2017

Label: Independent

Radiant Knife plays the sort of sludge-infused progressive metal popularized by fellow southerners Mastodon, but play the style very much in their own way.  Their self-titled debut is packed with inventive song structures and trampling riffs that are underscored by a strong sense of melody. It is an exciting debut from a band with a lot of promise. 

“Radiant Knife” CS//DD track listing:

1). Choose your necrodestination

2). Vacant faces

3). Haze

4). Emotional Wastelands

5). Shedding Black

6). The Lude

The Review:

While guitar and drum duos with scrappy production have managed to stay in style since The White Stripes released their debut album almost twenty years ago, very few of them have wandered into the musical territory of Louisiana-based band Radiant Knife. The band plays the sort of sludge-infused progressive metal popularized by fellow southerners Mastodon, but Radiant Knife play the style very much in their own way. The grimy production of their self-titled debut brings out a coarseness in the songs that is absent from the sleekly produced albums by the Mastodons and the Baronesses of the world. 

The track “Choose Your Necrodestination”, a synth laden instrumental full of thumping guitar riffs and alien atmosphere, opens the album. The track is followed by the significantly more somber “Vacant Spaces”, which features an understated, morose melody and culminates with a slow, grinding riff that is one of the most memorable moments on the album. Radiant Knife increase their tempos and their onslaught with rapid fire riffing and thunderous vocals on “Haze”. This burst of hostility is nicely contrasted by the album’s following track, “Emotional Wastelands”, which rings with joyous grooving, falsetto vocals and is certainly the most fun track anywhere on the album.

Radiant Knifeclearly enjoy orchestrating sudden departures, again leaning into contrasting feelings with their next track, the nine minute and thirty-four second long “Shedding Black”. The darkest, most despairing track on the debut, “Shedding Black” is loaded with chiming dissonances, washy guitar tones, harsh riffs and dramatic dynamic contrast. The album ends on the track “The Lude”, which is similar in mood to the earlier track “Vacant Faces”. Calm and solemn, “The Lude” roars and rumbles its way to the album’s end. Radiant Knife’s self-titled debut is packed with inventive song structures and trampling riffs that are underscored by a strong sense of melody. It is an exciting debut from a band with a lot of promise.  

“Radiant Knife” is available here

Band info:  bandcamp|| facebook