Tiger Knives, a darkwave project from Raleigh, North Carolina, emerged in 2019 as a lean, two-man project forged from the raw materials of old-school post-punk’s angular precision and the serrated ferocity of Nine Inch Nails, Type O Negative, and Deftones. Founders Jake Craven and Brandon Howell wielded their influences like well-honed blades, cutting through convention to create something both thunderous and lithe, heavy yet humming with an almost hypnotic energy.
Their debut LP, Ruminations, arrived in 2023 via Bleeding Ghost Records, a product of lockdown’s claustrophobic stillness. The album brims with taut, tempestuous tracks that echo isolation’s edge while reaching for release. In the wake of its release, the band expanded into a four-man wrecking crew, amplifying their already feral intensity.
Broad Base of Support strikes like a lightning storm, with chorus-laden guitars roaring in the spirit of Killing Joke, synths slicing and soaring like sharpened steel, and a rhythm section that crashes and cascades with the relentless drive of The Cult. The track feels like a reckoning, each beat a battle cry. Tiger Knives takes post-punk’s skeletal bones and breathes into them their own fiery animus, harnessing the power of reinvention wrapped in electric emotion and unflinching force.
The video for Broad Base of Support unfurls like a flickering relic of unease, piecing together fragments of cinematic lore. Footage from House on Haunted Hill (1959), Carnival of Souls (1962), and Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) dances in eerie rhythm, their monochrome menace enhanced by raw, grainy textures. Super 8 glimpses, captured by Graydaughter Creative, punctuate the video with a haunting intimacy, like half-forgotten memories unearthed in the attic of the subconscious. The result is a swirling, surreal fusion of sound and image—a hymn to horror’s golden age, steeped in mystery and flickering with restless life.
Watch the video for “Broad Base of Support” below:
Listen to Broad Base of Support below and order the album Ruminations here.
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