[7] On 18 April 2011, it was announced that the Knife was recording a new album, initially set to be released in 2012, through a post on the duo's website about the housing rights of Romani people in Rome.

[11] For the artwork of Shaking the Habitual, the duo commissioned Malmö-based illustrator Liv Strömquist to design a comic book titled End Extreme Wealth that turns the right wing's discourse against the poor on its head, depicting the 1% as a culturally-impoverished and vermin-like "other".

[27] Uncut's Rob Young wrote that Karin "possesses one of the most distinctive Scandinavian voices since Björk", referring to the duo's songs as "genetic pop mutations, scampering out of control".

"[30] AllMusic's Heather Phares opined that "Shaking the Habitual isn't as cohesive or accessible as Silent Shout, and after experiencing the whole thing, fans may not return to it often, but it's hard to deny that it's an often stunning work of art", dubbing the album "a testament to the Knife's skill that they make such formidable sounds so compelling for so long".

[23] Reviewer Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the Financial Times praised the entire album, and the singing in a "Siouxsie Sioux-style gravity amid a fusillade of eerie electronic beats", qualifying the result as "foreboding, apocalyptic and strangely exhilarating".

"[26] Louis Pattison of NME expressed, "Sporadically brilliant, perhaps it is the Knife's Inland Empire—a fearless piece of work with its own logic, one that shears away all safety nets.

"[28] Anna Wilson of Clash concluded, "Increasingly aggressive and overtly detuned, [Karin and Olof's] individual styles have collided to create something elemental, immense and unsettling.

"[34] Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan wrote that, compared to Silent Shout, Shaking the Habitual "explores even wilder styles of mordantly nutso android bleat".

[29] Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine viewed that most of the album "consign[s] anything remotely hooky into the realm of affectation", and the lyrics are "delivered by some of Karin's most obtuse vocal performances to date, her sinewy androgynous pipes muscling through slide-whistle octaves fearlessly and tunelessly.

"[36] The Guardian's Alexis Petridis felt that "Shaking the Habitual's problem is that the Knife seem to have dismissed the idea of making your point concisely as merely another affectation of a decadent and corrupt society", describing the album as "alternately utterly gripping and unbearably boring; incredibly bold and strangely flaccid, viscerally thrilling and hopelessly over-thought.