RADIANT KNIFE – Sankalpa Full-Album Premiere Precedes November 13 Release

Written by EOS Editorial Team

November 12, 2026

The complete Sankalpa album from Louisiana experimental doom metal duo RADIANT KNIFE is streaming at No Clean Singing ahead of its official release on Friday, November 13. The record will arrive digitally across all streaming platforms, with Bandcamp preorders available.

The ten-track release follows 2023’s Pressure. Stephen Sheppert handles guitars, synth and vocals alongside drummer Greg Travasos; Sheppert also recorded, mixed and mastered Sankalpa at Starless Sound. Terry Grow created the artwork.

The announcement describes a stronger emphasis on groove, melody, layering and texture while retaining elements of Pressure’s gritty, off-time approach. Dueling guitar overlays, atmospheric synths, floating vocals and dense rhythm guitars shape the record. Its title is defined as a heartfelt, focused intention or solemn vow.

RADIANT KNIFE’s sci-fi-influenced experimental metal draws on the mid-1990s output of Relapse, Hydrahead and Amphetamine Reptile Records. The supplied album description places Sankalpa near Hum, Elder and Russian Circles, while identifying Dazzling Killmen, King Crimson and 1990s experimental metal among its influences.

No Clean Singing describes the album’s shifting textures: “The music manically darts and heavily gouges, feverishly twitches and boldly brays, sends celestial keys shimmering overhead and inflicts brutishly chugging flurries, rhythmically rocks out and goes off-kilter, and becomes dreamy and woozy near the end, even as it continues to jab like a jackhammer.”

The premiere outlet also writes: “It’s enough to say that Sankalpa is an entirely captivating album — imaginative, genre-bending, beautifully performed, both dangerous and radiant, both heartbreaking and heart-bursting, earthbound and out of this world, and well worth your time from its arresting start to its soul-shaking finish.”

The announcement also includes the video for “Disciple Of The Astral Plane”, the album’s third track.

Its predecessor, Pressure, received praise from The Sleeping Shaman, which called it “a genuinely diverse and engaging piece of work”; Mystification Zine, which described it as “a face-clawing riff ‘n’ rhythm record”; and Metal Injection, which called it “synthy, doomy, and experimental.”