"shaking the habitual" received widespread acclaim from music critics. at metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 85, based on 43 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". robert christgau of "msn music" praised the album as "an exciting, multivalent dreijer sibling showcase". "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". lindsay zoladz of "pitchfork" hailed "shaking the habitual" as the duo's "most political, ambitious, accomplished album, but in a strange way it also feels like its most personal". philip sherburne of "spin" remarked that the knife have "never sounded more in tune with the materiality of sound or the sonorousness of the physical world." 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".